Soul Song
In order to see this content you need to have both enabled and installed. Visit for full instructions
"I didn't really want to see the similarities to begin with." John Roberts questions whether there is such a divide between north and south Wales.
Transcript
"Dad once said to me that the first word I ever uttered wasn't "Mam" or "More" but "Gagarin". Years later when monstrous love found me, I found myself walking into the unknown too. She wasn't for moving, you see, didn't fancy living in a foreign environment. Away to go then. Slate-astronaut, me. "So long, rwan, ta-ta." Whoosh! Trans-Cambria travelling into deep valley space. The shocks to the system when I got there came thick and fast. A culture clash of strange customs and weird traditions. Even the houses were odd, terraces, rows of them, stacked like wedding cake tiers, one on top of another, on top of another.
Another hardy group of people who toiled the earth's crust, that's what I found in those houses after getting a little more used to things down here. Took a while that, mind. Didn't really want to see the similarities to begin with, too used to having all the differences pointed out. Sick to death of the way we still do that in Wales, me. There is the North always looking down at the South. "Bloody south-Walians keeping their dragon in a bag, only letting it out for silly rugby games and the like." Down here's just as bad, flaming lot up there, always going on in that "gog-y" lingo. Aaach! What an awkward looking-glass world we're living in with this downward-pull-of-human-nature thing that we do.
Been in the south here for ages now, years like leaves drizzling off me. Guess I'll never manage to fit in totally, migrants rarely do. Doesn't matter, not really, we're all different but the same. That's all we've got to remember. No matter where we're from, no matter where we're living at either.
Do svidaniya!"
An interview with the author
What are you currently doing John?
I am a museum supervisor in the Museum of Welsh Life in San Ffagan's, Cardiff, but I live in Abertridwr. I am originally from Dinorwig, Gwynedd, and I have an active interest in writing, walking, going to the cinema, voluntary work and I'm chronically addicted to supporting Everton Football Club.
Why did you choose to tell this particular story?
I am fed up with the way some people want to divide us and this is for their own benefit, not ours. There is blame on more than one side here, but I cannot stand the way some politicians are 'playing the old orange card' with one of my two languages.
What was the experience of making the digital story like?
Hard work and bloody good fun. No one should hesitate if they get the chance to get involved.
