Fashioning Wales
26-November-2004
permalink email thisThis is my latest offering from my monthly column for the Welsh monthly newspaper Seren. Will post them up regularly from now. Column is a bit of a mix - Welsh culture and politics as seen form Germany - and a regular update on the progress of Werder Bremen football team.
Extended text for this entry:
I'm going up in the world. Editor invited me to do a feature as well as my column. I love it. Bit of a mixed bag this month - bit of this and a bit of that. But first - I have to tell you about the latest in my battles with Lloyds bank. This is a saga which has been going on for ever - I won't boor you with the details. I rang them today to try to get my address changed - this is about the fourth attempt. Very helpful person who said - as usual - you have to go to your local branch. I said - as usual - the nearest branch is about 400 miles. Oh - dear she said - have to talk to my supervisor. So far - all as normal. Then she came back and asked - do you know you live abroad? That fooled me. I had to think. Don't know quite what she meant but its obvious they are trying to train their staff to be friendly to customers and to help them!
OK - back to what I was going to write about. My daughter, Ardunn, is moving over here abandoning her career serving pints in Clwb y Bont in Ponty for a new adventure in the diaspora (more about that in a bit). What, I asked her in a stray email chat, are you going to miss? Back she came with - the one thing I'll miss is dressing up to go out. Don't get me wrong - Arddun isn't posh. Going out means the Ponty pubs - or pushing the boat out a bit - clubbing down Cardiff. Now I've often though about writing this but didn't now quite how to put it. I don't want to cause offense. But the one thing which amazes my friends from other countries when they visit Wales is the way the teenagers dress. You all know what I mean. Girls with skirts up their arses and bare legs in the middle of winter, boys with open neck white shirts and no coat or jacket despite it pissing with rain.It doesn't happen on the rest of the continent. OK in Bremen fashion may be dictated by the freezing winters and the fact that everyone rides bicycles. Bremen grunge I call it. But in Sweden or in other cold and wet countries kids are just as interested in fashion but still manage to stay warm and dry.
Talked on the phone to my mum in Swindon the other day. She is always on at me to but some new clothes and has got it in her head I need a new winter coat (she is probably right). Giving up on me getting my act together she talked to her local tailor (now that's posh). He comes out to Germany quite often, she said. He told me its good quality stuff but they are five years behind. Five years behind what I ask? What does this mean?, In five years time are we all going to be wearing mini skirts and open neck white shirts in the middle of winter?
My column's usually end in a quick moral bit about how socialism can solve all the problems of Wales (bit like a reverse values edition of Little House on the Prairie). I don't really have an ending to this story - although I do note Arddun is going out to buy some warm clothes this weekend. If any reader has any ideas for our peculiar fashion behavior drop me an email. For what its worth here is my take - but it's a bit academic. Being Welsh means having a strong cultural identity. That identity was always working class and quite macho - the coal miner and the Welsh maam. Strong figures battling against nature, capitalism and poverty. That identity has been taken from young people. We are struggling to build new forms of social, cultural and political identity. Short skirts, open necked shirts in the middle of winter show we are still hard, still working class, still ourselves. What do you think?
I've run out of space - will come back to the diaspora next month - to give you a teaser I have been invited to the Bremen English club!
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