Island of Lightning (2 page)

In my memory Felin Gwcw has always been a ruin. And known no cuckoos, only owls, owls to taunt any trespasser, but especially at twilight when the sky is the colour of an owl's egg and the owls, those amber-eyed alchemists, are transmuting moods, so that the child that was hurried in shadow with owls' feathers in his belly and owls' talons in his hair, hurried up the path that no longer exists and under the railway tunnel that does, the wagons passing overhead in a monsoon of acid smoke, blotting the light out with owls' wings, their roaring of
how-good-are-you-good-are-you
filling his head with an owlish cacophony.

These days a hazel wood surrounds Felin Gwcw. Briars like bowsaws and the white bones of ivy cover its walls. I stop short. There are people, I'm sure, conspiring; strangers, invaders, conniving.

But it is the Ffornwg's phonics I overhear, a soliloquy I should have recognised, those syllables being part of my own speech. And everywhere is hart's tongue and a starlight of stitchwort. Yet how easily my vocabulary sloughs its skins. Suddenly I am naked. Suddenly my flesh of words has disappeared. This is the dawn of time. This is a world before language. Here are stone and air and flowering things. Here is nettle dust. Here is water. Here are light's encryptions on the retina. Here is my pulse. Here is everything I knew unmade, and the silence's indictment of my fatuity.

Felin Gwcw too is unmade and yet proves irreducible. And then the train crashes past and I am looking at a man with a newspaper who for an instant is staring out at a place that does not exist and of which I have always been an inhabitant, a man who looks through me unseeing and is then amazed at how close I am, my bramble body that clings to Felin Gwcw, my dog rose eyes so near to him that he recoils as if he has glimpsed a ghost, and yes, I think, yes, he is right about that.

Are You Lonesome Tonight?

1.

Don't you know there's a hurricane coming? a man asked, pushing on into the sand.

There's always a hurricane, I said. Around here. We should be used to it.

2.

Chunky tyres, that's what this bicycle has. It's a mountain bike, a red and blue Emmelle, bought second hand, allowing me to go straight over kerbs and the speed humps on the sand-strewn, sometimes buried road across the badlands into the caravan site.

I was coming back through the fairground but cycling was hard work. Eventually I had to stop and push. Out of the west I had flown but heading home was arduous. Nothing else for it, I had to interrupt the journey and take shelter under an awning in the fairground. The wind was whipping the tide white. I could feel its sting.

The journey to the allotment goes past Dolly's Cabin and Robert's Ice Cream, straight through the fair, on through the flattened dunes and dismantled chalets, then into Trecco Bay. It takes me round one of the biggest caravan sites in Europe, down its High Street that at this time is full of holidaymakers. Only in December will the gates be padlocked and my way obstructed. Then, to save time, I have to drive or cycle a longer route.

When I finish fossiling and walk off the ridge, down from the moon-coloured corals of Cog y Brain, this is the way I come. In the limestone light the sea is blue as buckthorn. There runs its horizon, glimpsed behind the aisles of caravans and the neon signs for Coast restaurant and Costcutter. A squadron of turnstones passes over the barbecues in the sand, whilst the last ingots are cooling. Last rubies…

And every day that sand is different. In this wind it's a smoky glacier and the wind has blown every day this summer, a neurasthenic nag over the waves, sculpting the drifts and dune crests, revealing what has been lost, concealing what I might have considered permanent.

Might have. But I have lived here too long to believe anything can remain unchanged. Over a formica tabletop at the Blue Dolphin café, in my scalp after an expedition to Rhych, the sand will announce itself. Sand finer than scurf. Sand sharper than swarf.

But bravado cuts no ice in the fairground. With relief I dismount and start pushing. And that's where I see her. She is waving goodbye to a group of five other women, several in what I supposed are fifties' flared skirts and bobby sox. But looking uncertain. They pause outside the Hi Tide, the likeliest choice, but then are blown off course and decide to try The Buccaneer next door. The group turns around, the woman I'd noticed again in two minds. They are splitting up, but her bus won't be here for an hour.

The last time I visited The Buccaneer was with the poet, Iwan Llwyd. I had promised to demonstrate some ‘real fairground Porthcawl', that would match The Buck's reputation.

I know who these women are. They are the advance party for the Elvis Festival, now annual in Porthcawl. Today they're having to deal with Hurricane Katia, or at least its remnants.

I too take refuge in The Buck. The woman's already sitting at the bar, looking thoughtful. But how often have I seen her? Too many times. Yet it's never easy to remember who she is.

Yes, let her be Katia. A change from the predictable Keeley or Kayleigh. But she predates women with names like that, women marked with a K. Don't parents know that names starting with K are brandings, their owners scarred for life? Soon those names will be incomprehensible. From another language. Another era.

Still, I recognise her. Predictable on her barstool, one slip-on shoe hanging off, the mesh of her tights worn thin over a cracked heel. How do I know it's cracked? Because we are the same age and her heel is cracked where my heel is cracked and in need of a hard scrub. Digging where I dig, counting those ivory-coloured corals, round as moons, and walking where I walk, a pedicure seems urgent now. And when she stands it is as I do, one foot almost balancing on the other. A peculiar posture.

Yes, call her Katia. The hurricane woman. But that hurricane is almost blown out. Whenever I meet her, it is in places such as this. Always these places.

No matter the hour, time's nearly up. Katia knows it. Yet what else is there to do? Another drink? Another man? But all the men are lesser men now. Somehow disappointing men. Looking at such men she can measure herself. Gauge how far she has fallen. How far she has travelled in the wrong direction. Or she might compare herself to the others who are catching a different bus.

And as pubs will, The Buck encourages introspection. Iwan Llwyd wrote a poem about a man he met here. A man he considered a ‘character'. Now Iwan is dead and that man still a drunken boor. I look at Katia, never so haggard, never more thoughtful. She glances at her watch and waits at the counter. The wind might have slackened and I leave.

3.

Two weeks later the town is full of men with tremendous quiffs and sideburns. Some of this hair is real. The first two I spotted were searching for a café. Yes, unmistakeable Elvis tributeers. Probably they had booked rooms a year in advance, Elvis weekend specials without breakfast.

And soon there are hundreds. And then thousands. Many are men and women dressed as Elvis, or characters in the Elvis pantheon. As this is particularly sparse for a man who recorded an (estimated) 800 songs, their fancy dress is given over not only to approximations of The King, but people wearing anything notionally historical from the period.

These include men turned out as GI's, with women as appropriate dancing partners, men and women dressed as ‘hula' Elvis from the ‘Hawaiian' films, adorned in plastic garlands. A few are characters salvaged from early hits like
Jailhouse Rock.

This is one of the few songs that offer such opportunity. A Leiber-Stoller number from '57, Jerry Leiber died in August 2011 and was one of the era's better lyricists. Clearly he influenced Bob Dylan. ‘Jailhouse Rock' offers drama, characterisation, wit. How rare.

Of those paying homage to Elvis, two or three members of one party are dressed as ‘the Purple gang' – in fact “the whole rhythm section”. There are also the convicts with their numbers, possibly Spider Murphy, Shifty, and ‘the sad Sack'.

‘Jailhouse Rock' and ‘In the Ghetto' were probably the most interesting songs, lyrically, that Elvis recorded, the former ideal for interpretation by imaginative fancy-dressers.

Otherwise there are ironic, no, brutal commentaries on Elvis's weight gain in later years. Some men wear inflatable suits, others are padded with pillows. But generally, it's a bizarre parade. Anything goes, the weirder the better. Because tributes these days invariably involve some form of impersonation. Fancy dress has become a new art form.

Porthcawl seems an unlikely place for an Elvis celebration which has rapidly become extravagant. I work for the charity, Sustainable Wales, and am in the town every day. We have run a small shop for the last five years,
Sussed
, where all goods, the staff and volunteers are told, have their own unique story. We have to be able to tell those stories. So, be interested in what you sell, we encourage. This isn't an ordinary job. We're promoting life not a lifestyle.

That life might include local honey, environmentally-friendly detergent, fair trade chocolate. Crucial purchases? Hardly. We also sell new books. Not many, but enough to make us the only shop for miles aware of new literature.

But times are hard. The ‘footfall' in Porthcawl, we're told, has declined dramatically. It seems that people are waiting for our first Tesco to open.

For the first Elvis festival we had taken our rare pink vinyl double album from 1978 – eighteen number ones and gatefold cover – to display in
Sussed
. Truthfully, it had rarely been played. Unlistenables included ‘Love Me Tender', ‘Don't Cry Daddy', ‘Crying in the Chapel'. Mawkish, self-pitying, self-loathing.

That's why the best Elvis YouTubes show him drunk or overcome by absurdity. The highlight occurs when he heckles one of his backing singers. She misunderstands the purpose of his music, delivering an operetta-style performance. Sometimes, Elvis is saying, this is all…
ridiculous
.

And eight hundred and thirty seven Las Vegas concerts? Elvis's schedule seems preposterous but these days audiences for a single festival can be larger than his combined Vegas crowd. I was there when the Rolling Stones played Knebworth, August 21, 1976. They descended from a helicopter at 2 a.m., each an Orpheus with electric lyre, hair in spikes, tottering on Cuban heels.

The band faced down an audience estimated at half a million. Surely, they must have believed, they had been delivered into hell. When dawn broke, the scenes were apocalyptic. Knebworth, Woodstock, Isle of Wight? They were our generation's Waterloo. Or our Passchendaele. What a terrifying thought.

I admit I used to hate Elvis Presley. Didn't go to art school, did he? Wasn't in a group, was he? Importantly, he didn't write his own material, although he helped with early arrangements. Instead, he joined the army and was manipulated as a cash-cow by cynical management. John Lennon, who owed him so much (“before Elvis there was nothing”) said joining up had castrated Elvis.

Yet I've changed. I still dislike most Elvis music, but the early raw rock and the late dramatic flourish are fine, the former because of reworkings of tunes such as ‘Blue Moon over Kentucky'. These were propelled by a guitar and slapped bass played by Scotty Moore and Bill Black. The unreplicable Sun studio echo also contributed much. But most of those eight hundred songs are overwhelmed by kitsch. Formulaic, they're downright bad.

These days
Sussed
is the last shop in town where you might purchase new literature. Not that anyone does. How do book sellers manage? I've no idea. Books are fair trade chocolate in a world of Pound Shop bargain bins. In this town the last real book shop has given up and died. It will reopen as a hairdresser's, as everywhere else. I'm surprised the owners waited so long.

With the pink record I'd also taken the biography of Elvis by Albert Goldman. The album must have been noteworthy, as it was immediately stolen. The book was ignored, but then it is a hatchet job, almost literally so. Goldman's 600 pages have an unpleasant ‘know-better-than-you' tone. It ends with a graphic account of Elvis's autopsy, and a list of the drugs present in the body. The complete report has been sealed until 2027, fifty years after Elvis's death.

Environmental purists look away now. In an attempt to make money out of the deceased, our idea for the festival was to turn our town centre office, known as ‘The Green Room', into ‘The Elvis Diner', offering coffee and sandwiches. We had thought particularly of ‘The Elvis', assembled from a soft Italian loaf, a pound of peanut butter, several bananas cut lengthways, honey and a bacon garnish.

We also created a street stall for
Sussed
products, and played Elvis's music: scratchy vinyl, as authentic as we could manage. Raul Arieta, who runs the Porthcawl ‘Rock Club' accompanied the songs, then played alone, R&B becoming freeform jazz. The rest of us danced. I'd like to say
jived
but jiving's beyond me, although my wife, who frequented the original Cavern, is adept. One music lover who heckled with cries of
wankers
was removed by the constabulary.

Yes, times are hard and the environmental movement financially embarrassed. The world now requires greens who are innovative entrepreneurs, maybe prepared to live with nuclear power. As the new austerity bites, so idealists seem fewer. Or am I simply bewildered by middle age?

Nevertheless, at
Sussed
we decided to do Elvis proud. The shop window displayed copies of the
Daily Mirror
front page from August 17, 1976 – “Elvis Presley is dead” – and old album sleeves, such as ‘Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite' and ‘Elvis Sings the Wonderful World Of Christmas'.

Dead, one man said to me. Don't you know he's only sleeping?

Like every other hero from history…

4.

Now town teems with men with impossibly black wigs and muttonchops. They are entrants in the festival's karaokes and competitions. And I ask, who are these people? Why have they come? The clearest answer is they hail from south Wales, especially the valleys, and the English Midlands. What they're creating is a magnificent working class eisteddfod. And whoever they are, they certainly understand the protocols of alcohol.