in my house growing up, i was only ever really told of my welsh background by my dads parents. my dad, too, but less so. they told me all about how i'm the only one in the family without a welsh name (ha! not anymore; luc is welsh!), about how the last welsh speaker had only died a few years before i was born. i didn't think much of it, honestly, my identity was very much in other places.
before my teenage years, i was a third culture kid living a very average middle class life in a gulf country. my sense of nationality was a kind of puzzle; i was british, but i didn't relate to british kids. i spent every day surrounded by mainly indians, pakistanis, south africans, palestinians, malaysians, iraqis, syrians, and the list goes on. i learnt arabic and french in school, not spanish. my uniform was different, my school trips were different, my days were different, my lunches were different. i didn't know all of these hymns sung in assembly; to me, normal was outside lunch if you're not fasting, inside lunch if you are. i never played british bulldog, my friends tried and failed to teach me dabke. we made scoobies, not loom bands. i especially couldn't relate to my british friends who had started to openly explore queerness around year 6-7, but i don't feel right telling that story as if i'm such a victim as an immigrant.
from my teenage years and onwards, i lived in my north-eastern english hometown again. it's a rough little place by the sea, the quintessential shithole, but it's my shithole. i didn't slot right back in, despite going to the same secondary school as my primary school friends pre-moving abroad. people remembered me, but i was a boy now? weird. anyway. my identity then drifted into what was typical of my hometown; north-eastern grit, a very distinct accent, working class pride, you get it. i lost my non-descript international school accent to the typical teesside accent (honestly, thank god). i worked my shitty cash-in-hand zero-hours brexit pub job through sixth form and gap years. again, i didn't have much of a reason to give any real thought to the half of me that was technically welsh. i felt like i'd gotten a pretty good idea of who i am regarding where i'm from. i was north-eastern, boro til i die, but raised abroad, and loud about it. not in a pretentious way, in a "take the fucking piss mate, leave her alone, i grew up in a muslim country and theyre fucking sound, gwon fuck off" way.
if we skip over my villain arc (studying psych in newcastle), when i applied to uni, i knew i wanted the humanities. i love writing, i love reading, i love being critical of things i write and read, and i'm fucking dogshit at the hard sciences except anatomy/physiology. i didn't want to pick one, though; my options with my a-levels and interests were sociology, english language, linguistics, or something politics. after some scouting, i ruled out english language and linguistics (too hard, too many modules i didn't care about). then, i ruled out sociology on the grounds of not enough jobs, much to the dismay of current me. so, i landed on politics. what an idiot.
i'm gonna learn you something now. the formal, institutionalised, academic study of international politics started not in oxford, not in cambridge, not in london, but at the university of wales in aberystwyth (now just aberystwyth university. what's up with that?). for all the inevitable "where?!"'s, it's a town of around ten thousand locals and ten thousand students on the mid-west welsh coast. there's absolutely nothing for hours in either direction in terms of bigger towns or cities. cardiff is two and a half hours south-east if you're lucky enough to drive, birmingham about the same straight east. one train to shrewsbury leaves an hour, if you're lucky, with connections to manchester and birmingham. one major bus leaves per hour with connections to swansea, cardiff, and bristol after the two and a half hour bus ride. once a day, a coach leaves for an eight hour drive to london. if it rains, snows, freezes over, you're not going anywhere. and trust me, it does, a lot.
it's a surprisingly good place to study! the uni gets a rep of being shit for having a 95%+ acceptance rate, but actually, it's the best one in wales in a lot of areas. the rent is miles cheaper than a lot of students pay elsewhere, there's about a million bars and pubs despite only one club (fuck you pier pressure), and who doesn't want barbeques on the beach after uni in summer?! also, massive number of gay people, around 12% of the population are LGBT. crazy stats.
this was my thought process when applying, pretty much, along with the fact i knew a few people here already, and the interpol department being the first in the world. i didn't pay too much mind to the fact i was going to be the first one in the family to move back to wales; a very welsh-speaking region, too. it didn't cross my mind too much until i arrived.
it's not to say i felt immediately at home. i didn't, i was out of my depth for a week or so, as you always are when you move. maybe i'm a little more accustomed to it. people tell me i've moved so far, 300 miles, and my response is always "well, i moved like 4000 more before, so not really." but, being driven by my mums boyfriend down winding roads off the A44, passing only a few hamlets and the occassional village, hills rolling literally as far as the eye can see, thinking of my late dad and his family, i did feel like i'd come back to something. it didn't make me necessarily happy; it stung a bit. little old me hadn't learnt of the concept of hiraeth yet, bless him.
hiraeth is a welsh word with no direct english translation or equivalent. broadly, i describe it as "a homesickness or bittersweet longing for a place, specifically wales, that may or may not have ever really existed." i feel like i've come home to something; this is where i'm from as much as my north-eastern shithole is where i'm from. but, imagine what it could've been without centuries of being shoved into a corner by our unkindly neighbour? i'm so happy i get to bring cymraeg - the welsh language - back into my family, even if i'll probably never be fluent. but, fuck, i have to learn the language of the place half my family's from as an adult? i didn't grow up around it? it withered away in my own family tree despite a successful revival/preservation effort? not to be the most autistic welsh gay person ever, but aching longing by holding absence really does exemplify the feeling for me, especially on the train over the border from shrewsbury. shoutout welsh music, we really are goated.
[a thing i find really interesting about hiraeth is how quickly it can devolve into nationalism - and not in the "we want independence from a country that's bleeding us dry" way, in the "stop the boats, preserve welshness" way. maybe i'll say more about that another day.]
thankfully, i'd learn a lot more welsh words. today, my GP had a drawing from her kid on her wall that said "dw i'n bendigedig" (i am fantastic) and i pointed out how cute it is and she gleamed. a lot of students do bother to learn a bit of welsh, but a lot more don't. i know people don't clock me as welsh from my accent, and i am very clearly a student, but i do love pulling the little bit i have out. i've had a good amount of conversations about how nice it is to hear bits of welsh in slightly english accents. i might be limited to "i'm still learning," "thank you," and small talk on a good brain day, but it's something. i've become accustomed to saying iechyd da, not cheers (and getting absolutely blasted on gay admirals) on nights out that end at 24 hour spar, the holy grail of aber. i don't plan to have kids, but it brings me some kind of comfort to know that the language is still in my family because of me.
and also, if i'm being honest, it gives me a bit of a superiority complex over the annoying home counties kids in my classes who seem to not realise where they are. north-eastern english, or welsh, or both, i deserve a little hating on posh southern english twats.
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