The WAG needs Carl

I've never been to Merthyr Tydfil. I've only heard about it, and nothing good. When people here say "Merthyr," they say it with a tone of defeat -- as if they are remembering the pain and frustration of being punched really hard in the stomach.

In my head, Merthyr is associated mostly with its name. Welsh for "martyr," I envision life there as a process of slow and constant suffering. The once heart of Wales gouged by the deception of industrial promise; and a moral tale of what happens when you refuse to let go of the past. Merthyr, in my head is what Wales was. Or, rather, it is what What Wales Was has become. It is that unhappy cocktail of failed dreams, and ambition deficiency. In my head, the sun never shines in Merthyr.

That's almost certainly not true. I know a girl from Merthyr and she is, in fact, an incredibly warm and genuine person; the quintessential big-chested friendly Welsh woman who complains about the price of bread.

But, even she will lilt her voice just so slightly when speaking of her hometown -- as if speaking of a relative who was fortunate enough to pass away before the police could press charges over his collection of child porn.

Then, on the train tannoy (FTYPAH: "public-address system") this morning came the cheerful song of a proper Welsh valleys accent:

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome aboard the Arriva Trains Wales service to Merthyr Tydfil! Our next stop will be Cathays; please alight here for Cardiff University. Please have your tickets ready for the automatic ticket barriers. Those of you staying on past Cathays, again, welcome aboard! My name is Carl; I'll be taking care of you this morning, all the way up through Pontypridd and up to Merthyr! I'll be passing through the train shortly, so please have your tickets ready. OK, see you in a bit!"

Carl made Merthyr sound like a magical place. Pontypridd and Merthyr! Wow! He made them sound like places you'd want to go to. More than that, places you'd be a fool not to go to. What's that? You've never been to Merthyr? My dear boy, do you but hate life? Do you detest puppies and pretty girls and freedom? What man with even the weakest grasp on sanity would refute Merthyr Tydfil?

I wanted to stay on. I wanted to have a chat with Carl. Who can concentrate on learning Irish when Merthyr awaits? Just the enthusiasm that Carl put into saying the name was enough to make me think: "I am going to take a day trip to Merthyr in the summer. I will read up on it and go see this place with all its history. It will be great!"

Imagine how the Merthyr-bound passenger must have felt: "Hey! I'm going there! Carl's talking about me!"

Clearly, Carl needs to be employed by the Welsh Assembly Government. His happy voice should be piped into all the trains in Wales, making us all feel that the places we are going are special and important; making us eager to visit those places that are just down the road.

Assaulted by train staff

Two of the child bride's sisters are visiting the Cope estate at the moment, which means the days and nights are filled with the sounds of their virtually yelling at one another, punctuated by frequent explosions of cackling laughter.

The child bride comes from a large family, and the best way to be heard in a large family is to speak louder than everyone else. When the family members get together, the house reverberates with a noise that is almost physical; it pushes you around and makes you feel claustrophobic. Well, it does that to me.

And now that experience has come to my tiny house, in my tiny space on this tiny island. Rachel and her sisters seem to have lost any sense of the concept of "inside voice" and bellow at one another like excited deaf people. They quote lines from films they watched as children (almost always in that loud and high-pitched Queen Victoria voice that everyone does), gossip about so-and-so who lived down the street and is probably gay now, and cackle with laughter over every little thing.

It's that sisterly thing, of course. I know several guys who are very close with their brothers and they just don't act like this with each other. When my brother and I get together, we more often than not stare at each other until he asks me a question out of politeness ("So, how's that book going?"), and I accidentally answer in seriousness and he says, "Yeah. That's cool," which is Jon Code for: "I'm not going to make fun of you right now, but I reserve the right to do so at a later date."

Thursday found the sisterly triad and me wandering the streets of Bath, where the presence of other loud American tourists helped to lessen their effect just slightly. I was secretly happy when Jenny didn't respond to the text I sent her about our being there. For the sake of our friendship, I wasn't particularly eager to subject her and Chris to this mobile theatre of cacophony, but I felt it would be rude to visit their fair city without so much as a hello.

Anyway, we had an alright time, eating dinner at a Spanish restaurant in city centre that is effectively buried underneath the road, and were in good spirits as we arrived at the station to catch our train home.

As we walked into the station, I heard the announcement for the train to Cardiff Central and shot off up the steps. Now, I am one of those people who prides himself on being able to catch trains. If I had somehow been able to transpose my train-catching skills to rugby, I would have been Eastside Banshees RFC's top try-scorer, because I bound up steps, leap over things, break through crowds and run at shocking pace when trying to save myself 30 minutes of sitting around waiting for the next train.

For those of you playing along at home, most of the train doors here are automatic. They will all close at once but for one, that one being where the conductor stands. He/she leans out of said door while the other doors close, gets the signal from the platform conductor, shuts his door and signals to the driver that they are good to go. In that space of time that the other doors are closing, one can jump on the train via the conductor's door.

And so it was that I flew onto the 20:08 train from Bath Spa to Cardiff Central.

"Alright, mate," said the conductor as I got on. "Let's go."

"Just a sec, my wife and her sisters are right there," I said, pointing to the three-woman hurricane that was now about 30 feet from the train.

"No time," the conductor said. And he pressed the button to close the doors.

"Whoa. Hold on," I said, putting my shoulder into the doors to stop them from closing. "I can't leave without them!"

"Well, get out, then," he shouted. And he pushed me out of the train.

By this time, Rachel and her sisters were standing outside the door, looking shocked that I had been forcibly removed*. I spun around and shouted back at the conductor through the half-closed doors: "Come on, mate. They're all here. We're all standing right here."

"No!" he blustered, frantically pressing the button to close the door.

But then karma kicked in.

The doors refused to shut. He had fucked them up by throwing me into them. When it became obvious that he was going to have to completely reopen the doors to shut them, he grumbled permission for us to get on. He was still fussing with the thing as we sat down.

Even though it was dangerous to shove me from the train -- my foot could have gone into the gap, my foot could have caught the door or I could have been turned and gone head-first into the concrete platform -- I've decided not to file a complaint with First Great Western. It's just as effective to blog about it and less likely to result in any kind of unnecessary disciplinary action for a conductor who was probably just having a shit day. After all, this train had come all the way from Portsmouth; I'm sure he had been dealing with charming idiots all night long. And besides, he was polite to us once we were seated.

Still, one has to wonder sometimes why I am such a Britophile.

*Well, perhaps Rachel didn't look shocked. My being attacked by someone wouldn't surprise her at all -- she would assume I had done something to provoke them.

An open letter to Arriva Trains Wales

Dear Arriva Trains Wales,

Sometimes I feel very lonely and empty inside, and I want so very desperately to be held. I would like to thank you, therefore, for your utter incompetence when it comes to serving the needs of your customers.

Your morning- and afternoon-commute trains are so packed with people that they are physically pressed up against one another. Twice a day I can experience a level of intimacy that would usually require my buying dinner for someone, at the very least.

Even better, I often have multiple partners. Why, just the other day I found myself delighting in the warm embrace of five slightly largish women on the way from Cathays to Radyr. That kind of action would normally cost a fortune in Amsterdam, or require me to join a religious cult, but on Arriva trains it can be had for as little as £1.10. Actually, my experience was free! Your train was so crowded the conductor couldn't walk down the aisles to sell anyone a ticket.

Thanks Arriva Trains Wales. You're the best.

XOXO,
Chris Cope

Shocked. Shocked, I say

Whoa. You mean to tell me that trains running to Cardiff were late?! It boggles the mind that such a thing could happen.

The happiest chav

Every once in a while in my daily travels of this fine city I run into a bloke with an Eminem-style haircut who's missing a front tooth. He is most often to be seen wearing a dark blue shell suit ("track suit" for those of you playing along at home) and talking on one of two mobile phones that he carries everywhere. Most of the time he's having a conversation with someone who doesn't understand a word he's saying: "No, right, I gottih inuh pos. Wha? I say I gottit in nuh pos. In the post. The package I got. No, I got it in the post. No, mate. I got the package IN THE POST."

The way he speaks, stands, smokes, walks and dresses, he is as chav as the pope is Catholic. But here's the thing: he's a really friendly fellow. He is the happiest, friendliest chav that ever there was.

Usually I see him on the train or bus and he will say hello and have a quick chat with me about the weather. Then he will talk to old people about what they're doing that day, then the bus driver about sport. It always baffles me how congenial and strangely likeable he is.

I have decided, in fact, that he is the chav Jesus.

On the train this morning, some ass-hat came charging onto the train at Ninian Park in that "I'm really angry and I want everyone to know because somehow that makes me a man" way, and sat down across from the Chavenly Host.

"Rugby weather, innt?" said the chav, attempting to strike up a conversation.
"Fuck you. Where the fuck are you from?" said angry man.
"'Ere."
"Here? Where's fuckin' 'ere?"
"Cardiff."
"You're fucking (wearing a Manchester United Football Club logo on your shell suit)."
"Me mum's from Manchester."
"You're not from fucking Manchester, then."
"Me mum is."
"Where?"
"Dunno."
"YOU'RE NOT FROM FUCKING MANCHESTER! YOU'RE FROM FUCKING CARDIFF!"

At about this point I thought: "Oh, this is one of those moral tests to see whether I will pitch in or whether I will sit back and do nothing, thus allowing society to spiral further out of control until Britain becomes some kind of rainy Darfur."

So, I decided that if angry man attempted to physically attack the happiest chav, I would do the right and decent thing and drive my keys into his face as hard as I could.

And where was Craigy Bach?! The Conservatives talk tough, but when it comes to defending good-natured chavs on trains they're happy to leave the dirty work to the Americans. As usual.

Although, I have to admit that I was able to come to my decision so easily in part because the happiest chav is quite large -- about 6-foot-7. It's a good bet that if angry man had attempted to start a fight, he would have been unconscious before I arrived with my handful of keys.

This is a fact that may have occurred to angry man, as well, because in the time it took me to decide on what to do he had mellowed almost completely; he and the happiest chav were chatting amiably about their predictions for the Manchester United - Reading replay match. The happiest chav hadn't raised his voice, he had just carried on being amiable and had managed to defuse the situation. It was a moment of magic.

She's lying

The other day, for reasons unexplained, the following announcement got stuck on repeat in the train from Danescourt to Queen Street:

"An out-seat service of light refreshment is available on this train, serving a selection of hot and cold drinks and snacks. A steward will be passing through the train shortly."

This was repeated nonstop for approximately eight minutes. This was accompanied first by the conductor shouting out from the back, "She's lying! Pay no mind to that," and then several minutes of banging noises as he tried to figure out how to shut off the tannoy ("public address system"" for those of you playing along at home).

I found it amusing that the train was even equipped with that announcement. You're lucky to get doors that shut properly on most Arriva trains, let alone some bloke shilling hot chocolate and crisps.

Why the world needs Leatherman tools

Today's Arriva Trains fun involved the Bargoed train breaking down on the tracks between Cardiff Central and Cardiff Queen Street. Despite the fact that I was going the opposite direction (and therefore not needing to use that section of track) my train to Danescourt was delayed by 17 minutes.

They eventually managed to get the Bargoed train running and got it to Queen Street, where it promptly broke down again. That's when they really did make this announcement over the tannoy: "Does anybody have a screwdriver? A hammer? Anything? Anything?"

I'm inclined to believe they were taking the piss, but it's so hard to tell when Arriva is concerned.

160 cups of tea

TS Eliot measured life in coffee spoons (or, at least, I think he did -- the whole of my TS Eliot knowledge comes from that one Crash Test Dummies* song that mentions him); Mike Doughty** measured heartbreak in beer cans; so, I think it's worth noting that since moving here I have prepared 160 cups of tea.
Tuesday afternoon, I emptied the box of Murroughs Paned Gymreig that we bought at Asda on our first day in Cardiff (I would like to point out that the child bride and I were delirious with sleep deprivation when we went to Asda; we learned shortly after that it is owned by Wal-Mart and have never returned). Since I often drink more than one cup a day and have occasionally shared my precious tea with Jews, it doesn't quite work out to 160 days lived in Wales, but it still feels like a sort of benchmark.
I am gradually sloughing off various mental and material ties to the United States; I suppose that's a good thing. Chavtacular Caerdydd is starting to grow on me a bit.

In response to a few comments on this blog, the BBC has adjusted the playback feature for the "Eye on Wales" programme so you can now actually hear me getting the last word.
And, I've got to say, it is immensely ego inflating to have one of the world's largest, most respected, most valued media organizations respond to stuff on my blog. But I have known for a long time that the BBC is tracking me via a device they implanted in my skull; remember when that reporter showed up at the pub?*** I suppose, though, it's comforting to know that if I am attacked by chavs, robbed of all my shiny fake jewellery and New York Yankees paraphernalia and then left for dead, the BBC will know where to find me.

If you listened to the "Eye on Wales" programme Monday, you heard me reading out a post that mentioned Cardiff's laughable train service. Being disappointed by Arriva Trains is an experience that almost every Welsh person can relate to.
If I had more time, I would probably start a blog dedicated solely to Arriva's daily fuck-ups. I experience fewer trouble-free train journeys in South Wales than I did sexual intercourse in high school.
On Tuesday they managed to turn an 11-minute journey into an hour-long clusterfuckapalooza.
I always feel bad for the train company employees in these situations, because there's often not a whole hell of a lot they can do when a 20-year-old multi-tonne piece of machinery breaks down and blocks the line. Off the top of my head, I have never met an Arriva Trains employee that I wouldn't happily buy a pint. But having said that, Tuesday was the second time my attempts to arrive at Danescourt in a timely manner have been thwarted by a train breaking down. And I find it interesting that the last time this happened to me, that train also broke down at the Ninian Park platform... also at 2 p.m. ... also on a Tuesday.
If you think of Cardiff as a large circle, running roughly up the middle of that circle is the River Taff. On either side of the river, roughly, there are train lines: the City and the Merthyr/Rhondda. Some women will need a mirror for this, but a good (albeit immature) way to think of Cardiff is to imagine it as an enormous vagina -- with the City and Methyr/Rhondda lines serving as the labia minora, the village of Radyr serving as the clitoris, and Cardiff city centre serving as the perineum. I live on the left side of the labia minora, close to the clitoris, and the university is on the right, closer to the perineum.
On this particular rainy Tuesday at 2:06 in the afternoon, I had just barely managed to be at the train platform on time. I had a pint of Guinness in my tummy from lunch and after I found a seat near one of the (atypically functioning) heaters, I was feeling content and warm. I closed my eyes and tried to think of the paper that I would be writing into the ungodly hours of the morning.
Then I realised the train wasn't moving. And on cue, I heard the conductor shout: "All change, please, ladies and gentlemen. All change."
For those of you playing along at home, "all change" is train lingo for "everybody get off this train." You are most likely to hear the phrase when something gets fucked up, which means you hear it quite often in South Wales.
After first herding us toward another train, but then deciding that said train would go instead to Barry -- the spiritual anus of Cardiff, if not necessarily geographically -- we were made to stand on the platform for half an hour.
At 2:36 p.m., the next scheduled train arrived, but the broken engine was still in the way. However, the platform supervisor had figured out that while it was impossible to move a train north on the City line, the southbound tracks were clear. So, he could send us up to Radyr via the Merthyr/Rhondda line and then finally back down to the places we had hoped to be a quarter of an hour before. His determination to overcome any obstacle to reach the clitoris no doubt means his wife is very satisfied.
This plan confused the blokes running the train, and in a scene that is quintessential to the British train-travelling experience, a passenger had to explain it to them. The passenger was me. At least they didn't ask me to help fix the train.
Once we were all clear on what the hell we were doing -- bypassing three stations and going straight to Radyr -- the train driver seemed eager to answer a question that I've always had about the trains that run on these lines, that being: "How fast do these pieces of shit go?"
Since trains on the lines don't go more than a mile between stops, they tend not to move very quickly. But with about four miles of open track we were able to find out what the old Pacer could do. And what she could do was scare the shit out of me when she hit a rail joint. As the train bounced toward Radyr, it would occasionally hit a particularly uneven section of track and the floor of the second car would leap about a foot and a half.
A scheduled journey of 14 minutes, we covered it in five. And then we sat at Radyr for 20 minutes.
I finally got home at 3:08, which was 51 minutes late, or, nine minutes shy of the point at which Arriva will refund my money (and don't think I won't pursue my £1.40, yo. That's a half pint).

*Crash Test Dummies. How's that for obscure? Points to you if you know the song I'm talking about. Side fact: one of the lines in the chorus of that song is a life ambition for me.

**But the Mike Doughty reference is even more obscure. Extra special bonus points to the person who can name the song I'm referencing.

***A woman walked up to me and asked: "Are you Chris Cope?" She then explained that she was from BBC Wales and that she had been sent to interview me because "someone had heard" that I was at the pub. The story is located in the massive post that I wrote during three weeks without Internet.