Sunday 9 March 2025

As on several recent occasions, Huw and Janet Thomas rose nobly to the challenge of building a programme of hymns in an interesting and informative way. This year we were taken on round a map of Wales, seeking places that had given their names to hymn tunes. We didn’t always take the most direct route, but thankfully for the planet our virtual meander had zero carbon footprint!

As Huw played and we sang, and Janet gave us breathing space by sharing personal memories and giving some background from her researches, seeking to make “Cymru Connections”.

Stop 1: Warrington (“Hwn ydyw’r dydd o ras ein Duw”) – take a lead from the Romans and Oliver Cromwell!

Stop 2: Bryn Calfaria (“Wele wrth y drws yn curo”) – named after a lost-closed chapel in Caernarfon … probably, though disputed by our President!

Stop 3: Rhosymedre (“O! nefol addfwyn Oen”) – a village south-west of Wrexham, “home of Welsh football”

Stop 4: Builth (“Rhagluniaeth fawr y nef”) – Builth Wells is now the permanent home of the Royal Welsh Show.

Stop 5: Cwm Rhondda (“Wele’n sefyll rhwng y myrtwydd”) – a beautiful valley landscape, but a history of coal mining that had led to enormous population growth.

Stop 6: Saron (“Dy law sydd arnom, O! ein Duw”) – of three options, Janet chose to take the M4 to the Saron just outside Ammanford, formerly Cross Inn, and told the story of the 1925 Anthracite Strike.

Stop 7: Blaenwern (“Tyred, Iesu, i’r anialwch”) – named after the farm near Tufton where the composer had convalesced in his youth, brought back memories of their 1987 walk along the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path (35,000 feet of ascent!) from Poppit to Newgale.

Stop 8: Pantyfedwen  (“Tydi a wnaeth y wyrth, O Grist, Fab Duw”) – a tune that secured Morris Eddie Evans lasting fame, and a prize of £300 at the Rhys Thomas James Eisteddfod in Lampeter in 1968. This was one of the eisteddfodau supported by the DJ James Pantyfedwen Foundation, named after his family home in Cardiganshire.

Stop 9: Aberystwyth (“Iesu, Cyfaill f’enaid i”) – Do you remember the harbour? or the seaside resort in its railway heyday? or connect with its university, or its large number of pubs?

Our travels round the map reached their inevitable conclusion, “Stop 10” being the tea-trolley! Grateful thanks to everyone involved.

Friday 7 March 2025

The 2025 St David’s Day dinner attracted 32 members and friends, and was held, as has become usual, at Mortonhall Golf Club. Our President, David Hughes, welcomed members, and we raised a glass in memory of Eirwen Stillie, a long-standing EWS member, who had died very recently, before Margaret Brandie said Grace.

After an excellent dinner, those present gave a round of applause to Rhya and the Mortonhall team before the President introduced our guest speakers, Idwal and Bethanne Williams. Their connections went back to David’s time at Ysgol Syr Huw Owen in Caernarfon where Idwal arrived as a new rugby-playing maths teacher!

Idwal is also the brother of our member Hywel, and he spoke of their father’s appointment as Chief Electrical Engineer at the power station at Hawick, and of the family having been “marooned” there by a reorganisation in 1949! The illustrated life stories that followed were of rugby, university politics and a few years spent in Nigeria following his maths degree.

Unusually, many of Bethanne and Idwal’s memories could be brought together in one photograph – of their cottage fireplace, one of only two made of Dinorwig slate to a very unusual design. The items on or around the fireplace were many and varied:

• A chair brought back as a peace offering by Bethan’s great-grandfather after a bibulous time away with his brass band
• A wooden singing bird from Nigeria
• Horn sculptures
• Sculptures from Thailand
• “Gaudy Welsh” pottery

The stories these evoked were interspersed with tales of encounters with Siân Phillips and Peter O’Toole, dancing in Poland and a trip to Goa, and concluded with a video clip of a North Wales “House Hunt” programme in which they had both appeared, reminding us that our guests had previously treated us to a talk and demonstration of traditional Welsh Dance back in February 2017!

The applause that greeted their talk was followed by a Vote of Thanks by Cledwyn Thomas, freshly flown-in from Italy, who shared with our guests stories of Nigeria and misadventures with a Triumph Herald.

Our President then thanked a number of people for their contribution to EWS life, especially our Secretary, before Huw Thomas led us in singing. The fare included “Ar lan y môr”, “Calon lân” and the Llanelli-inevitable “Sosban Fach”, before we concluded with “Hen Wlad fy Nhadau” and headed off after having spent a splendid evening together.

Friday 7 February 2025

Our Chinese evening was everything we hoped for and more. The banquet as organised by Lilian was generous and varied, and there were boxes of goodies to take away too. Following the meal our guests Han Yilin and Yao Siqi demonstrated their traditional tea ceremony and calligraphy. It is the year of the snake and our inky attempts reflected that, with varying degrees of accuracy. We rounded off the evening with community singing.

Friday 20 September 2024

28 of us enjoyed another Croeso in the Mortonhall Golf Club, where we were pleased to welcome new members Llinos Jones and John Brown, and their young daughter Gwenno won all our hearts, displaying boundless energy as she pushed her dolly’s pram round and round the club house!

The welcome meeting’s main purpose is conversation, though there is usually a quiz. This year, with the recent holiday period in mind, Jennifer Welsher challenged us to put stickers on the world map at places we’d visited that were significant for us, and to say why, leading the way by talking briefly about Newcastle, NSW, and inviting her daughter Gillian to talk about her time in Vietnam.

Some of those who spoke talked about recent months: Alan and Helen Campbell had been to Kuala Lumpur for a very different Malaysian wedding; Walter and Megan Whitelaw had celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary on a trip to the Yukon; Hywel Williams had returned to Iceland, fascinated by its geology.

Others remembered the past, but looked forward to new experiences: Janet Thomas’ physio conferences had taken her to Port Elizabeth (an elephant family experience) and Dubai (too hot!), and she and Huw will be off to Japan next year; Llinos is returning once more to China in November, having first been there to teach English after university.

Yet others spoke of memorable experiences some years ago: Lin McMillan remembered being on a charity fundraising trip to Peru that included a ride on the Inca trail, hanging on to the pony’s mane with a 1,000ft drop alongside; John Bowles put his sticker on Siberia, having fond memories of a visit with a British Council group of librarians, where the contacts made had lasted for years; Ros Newton had been to India, where a crazy bus drive was rewarded by a rare close-up sighting of a tiger looking at the tourists with disdain, and she’d been so emotional that she’d hugged the driver!

Not all the experiences were positive: Jennifer had spent 3½ “awful years in the Bahamas” and had been glad to be back; Alison recalled a boat trip back to New Zealand’s South Island from Stewart Island – “it’s going to be rough!”; David Hughes remembered a “rescue mission” to a daughter stranded by conflict in a dark corner of Egypt.

Huw Thomas introduced his music slot by asking who had heard the news about ten Welsh words being added to the Oxford English Dictionary in its most recent quarterly list of additions. [The full list is at this link] Most were familiar to us, though not perhaps calennig (the tradition of New Year gifts).

We then sang Sospan fach – what else from a Llanelli man?! – Ar lan y môr, recently featured on the Last Night of the Proms, and the inevitable Calon lân, before finishing with Mae hen wlad fy nhadau.

Grateful thanks to the staff at Mortonhall, to all those who took part, and especially to Jennifer Welsher for her organisation.

Your webmaster thought it might be helpful to have a summary of the season as a separate post, rather than clutter the home page!

We had a busy first half, with our usual Croeso evening, a Harvest thanksgiving service, an illustrated talk by our President, a St Andrew’s Night supper party and a carol service. We much enjoyed a Chinese Evening at Priestfield on Friday 16 February and our annual St David’s Day dinner was held at Mortonhall Golf Club on the best possible date of Friday 1 March. And then there was a Gymanfa Ganu on Sunday 3 March … a bit different from usual! … and on Saturday 20 April we went to Galashiels to see the Great Tapestry of Scotland and have lunch. Click the links for reports on all these, or scroll down our Recent Meetings page.