Cardiff Calling

               I had to leave Cardiff suddenly in 2005 when I was fired from my dream job. They were right to dismiss me, my performance had been terrible. I’d have fired me too. The weekend after it all went wrong, I applied for everything and the first people that said yes were a holiday company offering a summer season in Tenerife. I packed up and left immediately. But what happened to Cardiff since I’ve been gone?

               The apartment I had booked overlooked the river. It was a new development that I couldn’t work out. I had to ask a security guard in a supermarket where it was, then I felt duty bound to go and buy something. Perhaps it was the sunflower lanyard & ear defenders or maybe he was just not used to people asking him questions, but he followed me round the shop. Under pressure, I got a load of things I didn’t want to buy including three varieties of sausage roll.

               Cardiff Bay has expanded yet the difference between what I remember and what I saw is how quiet is has become. Even though it was a weekend in early June, it felt like there were more places to eat than people who wanted to eat in them. I chose a takeaway from a noodle restaurant, I had about 10% of it, then a seagull swooped and scattered the rest across the pavement. Within about three seconds, I found myself in something similar to a remake of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ and promptly moved along.

               I had a lovely tour around the Wales Millenium Centre where we got to watch the technical staff setting up for a performance of an opera I was unfamiliar with. All the extremely heavy sets are still raised onto the stage by ropes operated by stagehands. I asked why it wasn’t operated by computer and that question went down about as well as if I had asked why it was not operated by alcohol fuelled puppies.

               Following that, I took the water taxi into the city centre to see how it had changed. It turned out that I had no memory at all of how it used to be so nothing to compare it to. I just wandered round a generic shopping district that could have been anywhere. The only thing of note is that on three separate occasions, I was stopped by somebody from the Hare Krishna movement, all of whom asked me what music I was listening to. None of them seemed to understand that I was just wearing ear defenders and not listening to anything. In the end I gave up trying to explain and just said Celine Dion.

               The following day I took a walk along the barrage, something that hadn’t been built when I was last there. It was a lovely, if windy day, and an inflatable obstacle course had been set up in the water, populated entirely by excitable children struggling not to be blown into the water. I decided to leave them to it.

               The final stop on my trip was a bus ride to Barry Island. This is one of those places where I have heard a lot about but never actually visited. Imagine a much smaller version of the Blackpool Pleasure Beach where everything is on a tight budget and you wouldn’t be far wrong. I wanted to go on the big wheel so I could get a view of the harbour but it was operated by tokens and the machine only sold awkward amounts so I had to get £10 worth of the stupid things. The big wheel was nice, giving me a good view across the bay.

               But I still had eight tokens left. I tried to use them to buy a burger but no, food didn’t count, a terrifying woman boomed at me. So, I went on a rollercoaster ride, a really small rollercoaster. I was the only person on it and I was only there to use up the tokens. Honestly, it was rubbish and I have never felt so tragic as a middle aged man going on an empty rollercoaster alone. Out of sheer embarrassment, I gave my remaining tokens to a passing woman and her pre-school child (people the rollercoaster may have been more suitable for).

               Before I left Cardiff, I had a quick look at the place I got fired from 19 years ago. It was exactly the same, the desks hadn’t moved, I am sure the chairs were the same too. The only thing that had changed was me and I am fine with that.

               It had been a good week… That was until the ‘Unfortunate Train Incident’…

               To be continued…