Kes Beacon, author and artist

and drunk! Also drunk.

Anyway. I was born in a gorgeous corner of South Wales, to parents who wanted to take me to explore it. I proceeded to move to the east of England - which kinda sucks, although the wages are higher there, but does mean one wonderful thing.

It means that the coves and ridges and highlands and beaches of my region of South Wales are both deeply nostalgic and deeply novel to me. Every time I go it's special, because I can't go there just any day, but it's also bone-deep familiar. I get to holiday in the place I was born and like it sucks that my day-to-day environment is so dull? But it does mean that those high sand and limestone cliffs and rolling sea-winds will never become mundane for me, now.

I was at Rhossili today, the Worm lying sullen in a cloud-grey sea and the sheep vibrant with fluorescent pink crests. It's a landscape I painted my adolescent pains on - somewhere there will still be the deeply depressing lyrics that weren't meant to be about what they were - and a landscape I return to over and over. The high hills, the dramatic sweep of the coast, the old wreck, and always the Worm's Head across the bay. It's timeless and still... new, in its way.

So this is something that I posted on tumblr in 2015, and I definitely do not want to lose it.

It is raining. You have not left shelter and you are soaked. You take a walk, because you have nothing to lose. You were wrong. You have everything to lose.

The ghost of Margaret Thatcher roams these hills, and in her footsteps needles sprout. The children are taught to pelt her with stones from the beach and the river, but every generation she takes her due.

You have grown up resenting England. When you go there, your accent changes. You keep quiet until half time in the rugby when the litany of a thousand years’ griefs comes pouring out. You do not remember learning it. You want to speak of something else. You cannot control your tongue.

‘I am Rebecca’s daughter,’ you say, but there are no toll-gates to storm. Resistance is in your bones, but the streets are full of cracks and the sand is smothering you. This is the new age. You have been forgotten, made redundant. Perhaps the council is hiring.

You pass four churches on every journey you make. They are different churches every day. Some of them are not churches anymore. On holy days, the people gather.

Hiraeth tastes bitter in your mouth and that of everyone you know, even though you barely speak the language. When you leave, you will come back, but you will still feel it. The real world is a dimension shift away from the-world-that-should. Sometimes people play the ‘where did it go wrong’ game. It has always been as it is. You will yearn, and you will return, and you will wonder where your home went. Hiraeth, they tell you. We can’t translate it, but we know it. So do you.

You are driving through the spoil tips. Or are they slag heaps? You are still driving through the spoil tips. You will always be driving through the spoil tips. You remember Aberfan. It is raining. You are afraid.

Your grandfather tells you there are ghosts in the waterfalls. He may be pulling your leg. Your leg is so long. There may be ghosts in the waterfalls. You do not go to find out.

The church with all its graves was the only thing to survive the bombs, when the city turned into a bowl of flame. After that, there were more graves, and everything was different. Everyone remembers. The church forgets.

You drive up the valleys. Your friend says they could hide a body up there. You are not sure they are your friend. You think you once had other friends; more friends. You could hide a body up there.

There are kites wheeling overhead. You are proud that they have established a foothold in your country, such beautiful, endangered birds. You know they eat carrion, but you do not see any for them to eat. Their numbers are growing.

You can hear the lighthouse from your house. You cannot see it, but it is there. You hope it is there. The fishing fleet is not in the harbour. The fishing fleet has not been in the harbour for a long time. Fresh fish still comes to the market.

Welsh coal fuelled the industrial revolution, and now it is gone. Something else left with the coal. You do not know what it was. Sometimes, the bodies in the mines sing.

Nothing in the museum is real except the things stolen from other lands. One day, you are in England and you find the real bones from your hometown. You hiss. This must be how the people who visit your museum feel, you think.

You have been to hundreds of castles in your local neighbourhood. The laughter of children rings hollow in the grassy, rubble-strewn courtyards. You did not buy the guidebook. You already know why the castle was built. They were planted by the English kings to anchor down the land so the dragon in the hills cannot get up. They are crumbling. You can feel the dragon breathing.