A Christmas Cracker

'Its beginning to look a lot like....', well, a bit of a shit sandwich really. The Covid poxed year of 2020 is finishing much as it took off in March. We had to cancel a walk in the Llyn at Easter and plans to make up for it in the October half term also fell apart, but accentuating the positive we managed to walk some of the path in the summer when restrictions were lifted. This Christmas isn't going to be the one that most of us planned but its still going to happen and the Path will be waiting for us when we are vaccinated and the sun starts to shine. It's time to square our collective shoulders and Keep Buggering On.

If I'm honest I probably enjoy the build up to Christmas more than the day itself. When I was a kid the Christmas season really arrived with the delivery of the Christmas Editions of the Radio and TV Times. They were big and fat, covering two weeks with Christmas quizzes and round ups of the year, but sod that, what I was interested was what was on the telly on the big days. I was profoundly nerdy as a child and I loved sitting down and marking up the 'Best Bits'.

If I am honest, I enjoyed the circling of every TV and radio programme as much as I did trying to watch and listen to all of them, which was a process fraught with hazards such as my dad deciding to watch a John Wayne or Audie Murphy cowboy movie on BBC2 that he had seen 25 times before but swore it was all new to him, or my mother popping in from the steamy kitchen where she was slaving away on the trifle (involving the odd swig of sherry to fortify her) and putting the Andy Williams Christmas Special on just to thwart my attempt to turn over to ITV. ITV was frowned upon in our house. I think it was the adverts, or the idea that ITV was low-brow and common. Anyway, we didn't often press the ITV button on our Rediffusion (sp?) TV in its large walnut box. (Same for us. We were a Blue Peter household and not a Magpie one. Magpie was less respectable in some way. Plus they would ask for money for their charity drive rather than the more eccentric bottle tops/ tea spoons thing.)

The most exciting thing was which film was going to be on. In the days before videos and Netflix this would be a film that was 5 years old. Five years is quite a bit of anticipation and it was always tinged with the apprehension that some well meaning family member or friend would visit while it was on. And there was no pause button. The year that the BBC showed The Sting we came to a family pact that if this happened the visitee would take the visitor into the Front Room (important capitalisation there, it was only used for best) and the rest of us could enjoy the film in peace. We planned to silence Aunty Jean (who has already cropped up in the blog) by leaving the Quality Street in easy reach. Aunty Jean was a demon with the Quality Street. She only liked the hard centres but couldn't be arsed to read the descriptions and so would squash them. If they squashed she would leave them and would continue her search for the toffees.

So the day was marked by the high spots of the telly. The cartoon in the morning, followed by The Wizard of Oz, Top of the Pops (which would always cause intergenerational arguments), the Queen in our house - my mother loved the royals, a Panto (traditionally naff), the Big Film and Morecombe And Wise. Happy days. And so, with a whisk of Tinkerbell's Wand we take you away from the tedium of lock down and off onto a selection box of moments from the Path. Hopefully none of you get left with the Bounty. I LOVE the Bounty, thank you very much!

The Cartoon

Drawn by the wonderful Jean Latham Robinson. Cows, banana outfits and Rhian looking determined, this has it all. I think.

We have had so many cartoon moments it is hard to know which one to pick. In the spirit of cartoon characters running off cliff edges and not falling until they realise what they have done, it has to involve falling over. The section from Llangrannog to New Quay was hard, not because of the distance but because of the nature of the path, close to steep drops and being liberally strewn with sheep shit. On top of this it was pissing down.

A picture taken at the time. On seeing us, the sheep hoofed it up the hill. Smug ovine bastards, sheep are the fell runners of the animal kingdom. Initially you think that they are stupid for being so close to the edge. After all, one blade of grass is much like another. But I think that they are taunting us with their ability. Both of us can drive cars so and we were on the same path as the sheep, so who was the most stupid, eh?

We walked up the path and its builders ran on ahead of us. Four feet were better than two. The path was a slimy mess and the rain was making it worse with every passing minute. Our boots were getting caked in the stuff and our walking poles sank easily into the faecal depths.   Sliding in the mess, I started to pay a lot of attention to the foliage on the right; the view to the left almost scared me enough to add to the asphalting. It was one hell of a drop into the sea.

‘This is bloody awful. I thought that this was supposed to be an easy walk’, Rhian said. ‘Whose stupid idea was this?’

‘Yours, I remember it well’

‘No, I’m sure it was yours’

With that, Rhian started to skid in the mud and slime and fell. There was a moment when she did the comedy thing of almost not falling, looking relived and then actually falling. Thank god she fell to the right and landed with her hand in a patch of stinging nettles and her arse in a mound of turds, rather than going over the edge.

‘Arrgghh, nettles!’

‘Oh! Is there a dock leaf?’ exclaimed Helen, in plaintive, Victorian heroine,’ someone come to our rescue’ tones.

‘A dock leaf, a fucking dock leaf? What the hell do I want one of them for.’

‘For your nettle stings’

‘Are you kidding? Do you know what they look like?!”

‘No, but I remember learning about them in Brownies’

‘Do you want to go over the edge, Helen?’

‘Not really’

‘Are you sure’

‘Yes, so no dock leaf then?’

‘I think I will cope’

‘Wet wipe?’

She looked murderous. So I thought it was better to trot on a bit.

The path wound on. We went through a gate and left the sheep behind. ‘Good job they weren’t cows, Rhi, because being chased by cows would have been terrifying instead of funny. And it’s stopped raining, it’s all going to be easy from this point and cow shit would have been worse than sheep shit to fall into’

Choosing not to respond, I looked ahead trying not to breathe in the scent of eau de mouton which I carried with me.

All considered, things seemed to be brightening up a bit. I was cold, wet and tired. But looking on the bright side, I hadn’t fallen in the nettles. That was Nettle Woman.

Top of the Pops

As Helen mentioned, Top of the Pops always caused a bit of intergenerational friction in our house. I would be wound up to fever pitch waiting for it, hoping my father would be out of the living room so I could watch it without his unhelpful commentary "Jesus! What is this rubbish? Look at him with that hair! Is that a man or a woman? What a racket! Turn over - there's a cowboy on BBC2!". ( My parents were rendered speechless by Boy George. And don't forget the ever popular 'What are they singing, I cant understand what they are singing?) I also had to hope against hope that Christmas lunch wouldn't be ready just as Mud or Queen were about to come on because if it did I had to be in my seat at the table, cracker in hand as soon as it was announced. Top of the Pops was always on at about 1pm and my mother was a stickler for lunch by 1.30pm latest. The tension always ran high and my heart would be pounding from the moment the legendary opening bars of the title tune began, through the excruciating embarrassment of Pan's People dancing hilariously literally to a classic hit (murder by mime), the anticipation of finding out what was our Christmas number one, to the unctuous farewells of the DJ who was presenting it.

This is a stunning example of the genre Pan's People dancing to Itchycoo Park - Bing video

And so here is our next extract, which includes an homage to Pan's People amongst all the walking nonsense.

The walks tend to take us all day. It doesn't seem to really matter how long the walk is, it always seems to take us most of a day and we have to do things to pass the time. Squabbling takes up a fair amount as does getting lost and then squabbling about getting lost but sometimes we have to have something structured to discuss. Our favourite 8 disks for the Desert Island is a popular choice and this invariably leads to more squabbling. Rhian just picks some dreadful stuff.

One time, on the walk from Llanrhystud to Aberystwyth we took this a bit further and started to mime the choices for the other to guess. We were working our way to the top of the steep hill and eventually the land evened out a little, but it certainly was not easy walking. Helen did an interesting impression of Kate Bush dancing to Wuthering Heights which thankfully nobody else was around to witness, except for a few sheep. Fey, winsome and balletic it was not. Pan's Peopleesque it was. We reached the top, looking down at the sea distantly crashing on the rocks, skirting our way around craggy outcrops and always, always failing to avoid the sheep shit. It was very high, and very windy, and very beautiful. We peered ahead in trepidation as the wind gusted alarmingly and a fine rain closed in.

Sheep, unimpressed by shenanigans and Kate Bush impersonations. They are just so hard to impress, sheep. as you can imagine the hours just flew by.

The Panto

Christmas isn't Christmas without a Panto. And there was always one on the TV at sometime over the Christmas period. I seem to remember that it would often clash with something that other people wanted to watch which would invariably give rise to sullen resentment from the losing party. The joy of getting your own way would fade as you watched the Panto. Somehow the big stars booked to play the leads would never be quite as funny as you anticipated and you were left feeling a little let down by them. And the people who wanted to watch what was on the other side would be smugly disparaging in their comments.

I just need to interject here: I never liked going to the panto. I lived in fear of being made to go up on stage, Widow Twanky and the pantomime horse always made me nervous and I didn't like sitting in a row with other children, some of whom had nits or were, on occasion, just plain smelly. I also didn't like having to shout out, with everyone else, "He's behind you!" or whatever was required. Don't ask me why. I was quite a peculiar child. (Oh the things I could say!)

My parents would usually take me to see a real panto and one year we went to the New Theatre in Cardiff. This felt luxurious beyond measure. The stage was enormous and the special effects (in reality just some whizzes and bangs) seemed space age. Not only that but we had a whole bag of Revels. Each. I was so excited I even forgot to be disappointed at getting the coffee ones. What was even more exciting was the fact that I was going to get to go on stage. Yes, me! I was going to be on stage, with the other desperate kids, singing with none other than Ivor Lewis Emmanuel , world famous for leading the ranks in a spirited rendition of 'Men of Harlech' in the film Zulu ( and a distant relative of mine, I might add). Fame was going to be mine. (She really is a shameful self-publicist with a desire for fame and glory that never ceases to amaze and amuse me). (This is harsh but undeniably true).This was going to make up for the time that I didn't get selected to play one of the Von Trapp children in a local performance of The Sound of Music (this in spite of my having actual long blonde hair, unlike some of the people who got the parts.) She is convinced it was because she wore glasses. (I seem to remember my mother saying I could take them off during the performance. This might have been true but as I'm as blind as a bat I would probably have danced off the stage during one of the musical numbers and ended up in the orchestra pit.) It may have been that. Or perhaps an inability to act? A habit of gazing into the audience, completely stage-struck, though seldom lost for words? I was on stage for all of 5 minutes and got to sing a line from the Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer song. Truly my star with in ascendency. Me and Ivor, stars of the stage and I had a bag of sweets for being a good sport. Frankly life has been downhill ever since.

gilly gilly ossenfeffer - Bing

We have now spent four years walking the path. We have walked it in brilliant sunshine and driving rain. We have walked it in spring, summer, autumn and winter and all of them have different marvels on offer. We have walked the wild sections of the Pembrokeshire in all its stunning beauty and we have walked past the Flaming Towers of Mordor round oil refineries and steel works. But beautiful or despoiled, one thing that is a constant is laughter. Sometimes we manage to generate this ourselves but some times its the stuff we walk past. There seems to be a surreal sense of humour that is bred into the locals. Maybe it is genetic, maybe it comes of having to share the places they love with hordes of tourists, either way its kept us amused while we have trudged along. We walk for several hours at a time and its mostly laughter that keeps us going and I can only do my Julie Andrews impersonation so often before it gets dull. But only once have we seen a pantomime style horse.

As we walked down into Aberaeron we passed a large house, overlooking the sea on the outskirts of town. In fact it might have been the first house that we found. we were tired and looking forward to a nice hot bath and a nice glass of cold wine. All in all it had all been the sort of day we were hoping for. We hadn't got lost and no one had fallen in sheep shit. So it was a real bonus when we saw Black Beauty in their garden.

It was quite astonishing, full size and there, on the lawn, in all its glory. Looking rather startled. Nothing to suggest why it was there, no bails of hay or equestrian kit. Someone just thought, 'Do you know what, Idwal, what that garden really needs is a full size model horse, just in front of the bushes'. And damn me, but they just did it. Just fabulous. I've never been brave enough to even have a gnome in my garden and they went full on Horse of the Year Show. We laughed all the way into town. It's the startled expression on his face that gets me every time.

The Big Film

Anticipation was always rife regarding what the Big Film would be on Christmas Day. I too remember The Sting as a real highlight and it reinforced my complete infatuation with Paul Newman that had begun a year or two before when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was shown. I remember being scared witless by the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, wanting to be cast as an orphan in Oliver! and crying at the end of The Railway Children (no spoilers). What a treat! Sometimes we weren't keen on the film on offer and that put a bit of a damper on Christmas afternoon proceedings but it was ok because we had what seemed to me to be mountains of chocolate and I always had a couple of books and annuals to read. I adored the Christmas film. And I loved them all, even films that were a million miles for Disney. The Great Escape or Bridge on the River Kwai, bring it on. It makes me realise that we were terribly easily pleased as kids.

All of this came flooding back when we were walking part of the Carmarthen section of the path. We were walking along quite a dull section of road that we had taken to avoid the steeper path alternative. It was an easy walk but we were getting bored. After a while we could see a caravan park on the other side of the railway line. The site was vast, it must have taken us around 20 minutes to walk past it. We could hear the children shouting and yelling happily at the swimming pool that was a deep blue. I feel quite sure that pitching your caravan on that site would be really expensive and there were lots of facilities to enjoy but from our vantage point it looked all the world like a WW2 prisoner of war camp. All that was missing were the guard towers. We plodded on.

'Stalag Luft Carmarthen.'

'Yes, look! I think there is someone taking a wooden horse out into the parade ground!'

'And there are people shaking sand out of their trousers to hide it from the guards. I bet they will start singing next to cover the sound of the digging'.

'I bet that man in Big X.'

Keeping a look out for exit tunnels for Tom, Dick and Harry we plodded on and eventually the highland route re-joined us at a place called Penallt Farm. The hill was steep and for all I had found the last few miles dull, I wasn't unhappy that we had opted to take the easier path, my feet were bloody killing me.

Suddenly Rhian shouted and pointed up the hill. 'Look, it's Steve McQueen on his motor bike! He must have made a break for it!'

I laughed. 'You'd think that he would know where the barbed wire was after a while. I watched that every year at Christmas, and every year he got caught at the same place!'

'And that fella gets tricked by 'good luck' every time.'

'They just never learn.'

Morecambe and Wise

And on to our final Christmas TV treat, the light entertainment apogee of the whole year: Morecambe and Wise. Or The Two Ronnies. Utter genius. Forget the excessive episodes of Eastenders or Corrie, this was TV treasure. The nearest we have come to it in recent years is the return of Gavin and Stacey. My dad would pour himself a beer, the dog would lie across our laps, gently farting after guzzling down her own fair share of sprouts and turkey (She says it was the dog) and my mother, with a sherry in one hand and a chocolate liqueur in the other, would settle down in her chair. The comedy gold that we were treated to never loses its lustre. The great stars of stage and screen lining up to be ritually humiliated by the wonderful Eric and Ernie. My dad would start laughing and couldn't stop. My mother never cried when sad but she would weep copiously at a gaggle of newsreaders trying to perform There is Nothing Like a Dame. Comedy genius. And if you are British and of a certain age just a quote will make you laugh. Mention 'Fork Handles' or 'I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order' and people will laugh

BBC Two - The Morecambe and Wise Show, Christmas Show 1976, Singing In The Rain

I beg you not to assume that we are in any way trying to compare ourselves to Morecambe and Wise. Hubris is characteristic that tends to lead to a tragic downfall. The only similarity I can draw is that I am tall and wear glasses and Helen is the short, chubby one. (Without hairy legs!) However, we have tried to select a passage that our readers have found amusing, so here we go:

The path took us round the headland and after a little while we could see the small beach at Porthlysgi Bay and the Island of Carreg Y Esgob. My toe condoms had shifted and I was in a lot of pain.

'I'm sorry Rhi, but i have to stop and do something about my feet'. She made sympathetic noises and waited while I re-dressed my feet.

'Bollocks, ' she hissed, 'It's the Three English Chaps! They are going to over take us.'

As the men approached she called a cheery hello and asked them if they had seen the dolphins. This was one way of reasserting our dominance over the situation.

This is a photograph of the Three English Chaps. I only found it when digging out photos for the the blog. To my huge amusement I could see three small figures on one unremarkable snap. I enlarged it and there they were, in all their glory. I added the emojis to protect the innocent. The Long and the Short with Grumpy, we were ahead of them but only just!

Bathed in sweat, I was hurrying ahead at the point when Helen took this photo - childish, I know.

Grumpy was the first to speak, 'I think you will find that they were probably porpoises' and looked smug.

This was fighting talk.

Rhian gave him a steely look, 'OK', she said, 'Did you see the cetaceans in the sound?'

I was profoundly impressed by her grasp of taxonomic nomenclature and keeping her temper. I spend a lot of time with you, my dear.

Short looked amused by the exchange, 'Yes, weren't they wonderful?"

Long asked us how far we were walking, and where were from, typical walkers' chit-chat, and we explained what our plan was, where we came from and all the usual details of mileage and parts of the path we had already covered. We like to do this to try to establish the bragging rights if we can. People can be very dismissive of two clearly unprofessional women walkers of our age. In turn he told us that they were friends and colleagues who worked in London as accountants.

"I'm an actuary, actually," said the, I felt, somewhat pedantic Grumpy.

They were on a chaps' walking holiday for a few days only and extolled the beauties of North Pembrokeshire.

"Have you visited St David's?" Helen asked. "The cathedral is small but perfectly formed, and worth a visit."

Short said that they had, smiling warmly at her, I noted. "Yes - coming from Lincoln you have a pretty impressive cathedral."

"Yes!" exclaimed Helen, going on to expound on the glories of its Green Man. (It really is stunning and I am known to wax lyrical about it to the unwary. My daughter once listened to me doing this to an American tourist and said, in a very resigned way, 'You just cant stop yourself , Mum, can you?')

As she talked Grumpy got his binoculars out and gazed seaward, while Long checked his watch and fished in his pocket for his OS map. Short, meanwhile, became animated as he suggested that if she wanted to see a really impressive Green Man she should visit the church in Lower Swell, his neck of the woods. She said, "That sounds interesting!" and he laughingly said, "You can have my phone number and give me a call when you're in the area!"

Long gave a little cough and glanced at Grumpy. I looked away to hide the smirk that crept unwillingly to my lip. Lower Swell, indeed.

Grumpy said, "Well, good to talk to you ladies, but it's time we headed on!" Long began to walk ahead and Short reluctantly dragged himself away from us, saying, somewhat longingly, I thought, "See you later I expect." He smiled into Helen's eyes and ignored me completely.

As they walked off I said, "Well THAT was an interesting chat! They seemed very pleasant," inviting further discussion of what had obviously been an attempt to chat Helen up.

"Yes," she said, "though Grumpy wasn't very friendly, was he?"

I looked at her. Surely she had realised? Perhaps she just didn't want to talk about it. I tried again. "Short was though, wasn't he?"

"Yes. Seemed very interested in churches."

At this, I nearly choked on my yoghurt covered raisins. I was about to open my mouth and ask her direct whether she had noticed his attempts to exchange phone numbers and his excessive laughter at her somewhat feeble jokes, (Excellent jokes, I will have you know) but she had turned to look out to sea and spotted those cetaceans again which distracted both of us from conversation. I left it at that. She couldn't be that dozy. She was just being coy. I wasn't going to pander to that kind of nonsense and so decided to let her broach the subject when she was ready.

The day ended with us beating the Three Chaps back to the pub and my completely missing the chat up lines. But we had a fine time and we still laugh about it. Laughing has sometimes been a little sparse this year. It's been a tough one and we have written these blog articles to entertain each other. Hopefully we have raised a few laughs for other people too. We started the walking to help deal with stress and worry. When we walk we chat and bicker and laugh for hours on end and that has helped us both get through some difficult times. We have also found is that the most wonderful discoveries can be been made when you take the wrong path. Sometimes a different route can show you things you never expected. This year hasn't been what any of us planned but life can still be astonishing. All we need to do is put one foot in front of the other and laugh while we do it.

The most astonishing view we have seen on the Path and we saw it because we were lost.

Despite the current situation we hope that your Christmas is a warm and safe one and that better things are round the next bend in the road.

And so it’s good night from me.

And it's good night from her.