THIS weekend I went to visit my journalist friend Tom, who works in Wales.
On paper, our lives are only separated by one letter.
I report on Cumbrian news, while he works at a paper called the Cambrian News.
However, to get from the reality of Lakeland fells and Kendal Mint Cake to Aberystwyth is quite a jump.
Firstly, they are 140 miles apart, a geographical distance which I had not fully appreciated when booking my train ticket.
To enter Tom’s Welsh kingdom involved a five-hour journey, plus, I got stuck in rainy Wolverhampton for another two hours. By the time I met up with him I was so high on sweets and mocha coffee I could barely stand.
The Cambrian reporting patch is large – a great rolling landscape with the beautiful turquoise coasts of Ynyslas and Borth are beautiful.
I had fun with the language, because I couldn’t pronounce any of the town names.
A lot of journeys we shared included scenes when I squinted at road signs before saying something like ‘Paint yer Hog Fane’.
There would be a long pause while Tom tried to figure out what I was on about, and then he would correct me.
“It’s Pant-yr-Hogfaen.”
“Mack-chin-leth.”
“No, it’s Machynlleth.”
“Egglesfack.”
“What?”
“Egglesfack.”
“I can’t even guess what you’re trying to say there.”
And then Wales has its own wildlife. There seem to be kites and buzzards everywhere.
At my home in Kendal I am often woken by two crows, Edgar and Allen, who chatter above my window. At Tom’s converted farm there is a plucky wagtail that taps the kitchen window each morning.
Just as the novelty of crows wears off a bit when they wake you at 4am, so Tom seems to have lost the joy of the wagtail.
We jumped off Welsh sand dunes, I put my feet in the freezing sea and we ate Welsh mussels and drank Welsh tea.
Cambria was a Welsh parallel dimension. What a difference an ‘A’ makes.
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