Ode to Ely

Hot summer days over Ely,

Smokin skunk getting touchy, touchy feely,

Cortina on bricks in the garden,

Wiv all my mates and their dogs,

Real ard ones.

Wha appen bruv, I godda rush to probation.

My officer got no fuckin patience,

We’es all ganged up outside,

Wiv our hands down our strides,

Til our names get called

We just fiddle wiv our balls,

They keep us waitin on the street

So we stroke our bits of meat finding comfort short and sweet,

I got aggro phobia see, anxiety and depression

I’m not allowed to work in case I kick the boss’s ed in

So now Ive been to my appointment and said Ive done no wrong,

I godda rush back to Ely to fix the fucking bong

Laters Bruv…safe.

***

Cath – according to her friend, Lynne Hughes:
“My reclusive mate Cath is a very private person and far too modest to write about herself so (being her opposite!) I’m doing it for her. Cath lives in ‘New Butetown’ as the Old Butetown residents like to call it. New Butetown residents tend to call it Cardiff Bay (or just The Bay) but me and the Post Office still reckon it’s Butetown if you’re on the Police Station side of Clarence Bridge.

“Cath is a lady of paradoxes. Reclusive but an Alabama 3 groupie, private but very much engaged with the world and her family and friends. She has a sense of fairness which would probably make her deeply depressed if she didn’t have such a broad sense of humour (as her little poem demonstrates!).

“As she is my neighbour as well as my friend I get to share public and private moments with her and she’s a great conversationalist. Last weekend I got invited to help demolish a load of leftovers from a little soiree she’d had the night before – yom yom. We managed to discuss racism, sexism, suicide, homicide, psychopathology, gynaecology, oenology and haute cuisine and didn’t fall out once.

“Oh and she’s a really good amateur photographer too, which, allied to a healthy sense of curiosity, produces some amazing photos. Last year she spent a month alone driving around the furthest reaches of Scotland (personally I can’t think of a worse way of spending a holiday) and her digital photo record of the trip is wonderful.

“Cath is a Llantwit girl originally and still has deep roots there but she loves living in Cardiff and being close to good transport links and surrounded by entertainment, culture and events (not to mention fascinating neighbours like me……).

“She also dogsits for friends. The lovely Rita is a Scottish Terrier bitch and a bit like Cath really – reclusive, a bit private and a mind of her own. In fact, Rita is the reason Cath & I met. A few years ago I dogshared a Parson Jack Russell and Cath and I met in Hamadryad Park when walking the dogs. We exchanged admiring comments about the animals (as you do) and discovered we were neighbours. Dogs, like kids, are a great way to meet friends. And the rest is history.

“Cath loves that from Butetown she can walk to City Centre shops and events in one direction and around the Bay in the other direction and she is only 5 minutes walk from Mermaid Quay and Hamadryad Park.

“As Cath is a 9-5 working girl and I’m a retired 9-5 playing girl our encounters tend to be at weekends and Cath does like the occasional early doors drink in Mischief our local CafeBar, long walks around the barrage and a glass or two on Mermaid Quay in the summer. She will also confess to drinking far too much Prosecco with me one afternoon when we went to WMC to catch a poetry gig on the Tesco stage.

“I can’t say much more because she’s going to edit this and she’ll only cross out the most revealing and interesting bits but she’s a great mate and she looked after my cat once when I was away so I daren’t offend her! And she’s dead against any pics of herself so I’ve just put in pics of the animals..

“For a private recluse Cath has a very gregarious and social side, but then she is Welsh and at the moment anyway, she is Cardiff …”

***

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