The Green Green Grass of Home

Visiting home with Ben last August was amazing and just the tonic I needed after 8 months without seeing the clan...

First of all, the most surprising thing was that my step-dad who ‘hates all Yanks’ really warmed to Ben. He took it upon himself to educate dear Benji on the customs and colloquialisms of Wales including incredibly detailed explanations on the differences of tone between the insults of ‘Wanker’ and ‘Tosser’, etc. Also, how to greet a local yokel from the Valleys of South Wales…

Valley Boy: O’rite, Butt? (Are you alright, old chap?)
Benji: Tidy butt/Tidy like. (Why yes, I’m very well, thank you for asking).

* ‘Butt’ in Valley-speak comes from the word ‘Butty’ or ‘Bytti’ meaning ‘friend’. ‘Tidy’ is also valleys slang for ‘Cool/Good/Alright/Nice’. ‘Like’ is used as punctuation, sometimes. It is usually used to join sentences like a comma, or as a full stop at the end of a sentence, as opposed to at the start, like in some countries. “I was walking down the street, like…and I saw my butty and ‘ee was with this boy, like…so we went to ‘ave a cupple uh pints and ‘ee was a really tidy boy like...”

I got to sleep in my lush bed which was a real treat and have a continental breakfast of French Goats cheese, English muffins, Parma ham and Italian cheeses every morning if I wanted. I got to eat lots of baked beans and multigrain bread and Branston pickle, which I really miss when I’m in Japan.

One of the most fun things was introducing Ben to new and strange foods that he has never tried before. It was like when you have a little cousin and you teach them to swear or give them a sip of beer or a bar of chocolate when their mother had told you not to. I kept buying things and getting excited because I knew he had never tried them before…like Melton Mowbray Pork Pies, Cornish pasties and Prawn Cocktail crisps.

Against Ben’s better judgment and will, my step-dad forced him to eat one of the scariest things on the U.K breakfast menu – Black Pudding (made of congealed pig/cattle’s blood, suet and spices). Bless him. Bob tried the same thing when I was eight. We weren’t allowed to leave the table until all our breakfast was eaten (including the black pudding), so when Bob left the room my step-brother Justin and I threw it over next-door’s fence into their garden and then claimed we’d finished it – voila!

One day, Benji and I visited the museum of Welsh life in Saint Fagans with my Dad and we went for lunch. My Dad couldn’t believe that Ben had never tried Cider before and since Cider was the new black last year, we tried some ‘Magners’ and my Dad took a photo of Benji trying his first proper pint of cider – it was so cute! Can I just say that if you ever go to the ‘Plymouth Arms’ in Saint Fagans, you simply must try the Steak n Ale pie, it’s a must. The Fish and Chips there were pretty damn good as well…and an American (epic) size portion, no less!

I finally got to meet Taiyo-chan, my new nephew. He is a gorgeous baby and I nearly abducted him and brought him back to Japan. My dogs Tess and Chips are in their winter years now. They were 14 last April, so they really are quite old. Chips is covered in gross growths/dog boils and Tess is fat with cataracts in her eyes. They absolutely reek of dog-old age-bad-oral-hygiene but from a distance or if you hold your breath when you stroke them, you can still appreciate that they are cute.

I was shocked by how tall and grown up my nieces and nephews were. Callum was nearly as tall as me and you could have full on conversations with Ellie-Mae although she was at the stage where she was asking ‘Why?’ all the time. Emily started high school the month after I left. Laura, my eldest niece was planning on going to University. Jesus. So much stuff goes on at home whilst I’m not there.

We got to road trip up to North Wales to go and hike Snowdon Mountain (OK, we’re not that hard-core; we got the train to the summit and then hiked down). The view from Snowdon was…..erm…well I imagine it was lovely but we couldn’t see bugger all due to the thick blankets of fog and misty rain. Bugger. It was quite annoying. After hiking for 2hours though, the fog cleared and we could actually see some nice views. Sodding Welsh Weather.

Benji got to hear Welsh being spoken all throughout North Wales which was probably weird for him. It was nice for me though. The landscape in North Wales is really spectacular. The homes there are amazing, gorgeous little stone cottages built with huge Llanberis stone and Welsh slate, tucked away in dense forests and green hills. We also visited Portmeirion, the Italianette village in North Wales. Again, the weather was crap.

We then drove down to West Wales, although we cancelled our night by the Sea in Tenby because it was cloudy and rainy. We caught up with some of my friends – Rhian and her fiancé Roger who came down from Staffs to see me, Caroline and Lee and their baby Rhydian, Sarah and Rob, Abby and Louise and the recently married Lyn and Helina. I saw my little gay Timmy and Welsh Sam, my friend from Uni. When we were out for dinner with Sam at Las Iguanas in Cardiff, I made the mistake of ordering a Tuna steak. If you have lived in Japan for two years and tried the seafood in Hawaii, this is a big no-no…unless you like feasting on scouring pads.

Seeing all the shops, bars, restaurants, events…It really made me wish I was back in Cardiff. I really missed the city. Even though when I lived there I was always skint! Being home was as always, a great chance to catch up with my mad cousins. I was keen to get Benji accustomed to our Welsh hillbilly way of life. He was, I think pleasantly surprised by our closeness, our crassness and our constant ribbing of each other. I think at one stage he was freaked out at all the volumes of people who came to the house. ‘There are so many people!’, we must have looked like the Corleone family with all that feeding and talking, although admittedly less money and organised crime. He had to go to bed for an hour to recover.

I had a really hard time leaving everyone (again). I knew that I wouldn’t see most of my family for another whole year. Because this is my last year on the JET Programme, I had to save money for University. This means that this year, there will be NO more holidays and/or trips home, until I am home in July/Aug. I am so excited to be coming home. There’s so much more of the U.K I want to see and it’s about time I went over to France, as well. I’ve seen a fair bit of South East Asia, but now I think it’s time to explore what’s in my own back garden….