In 1938, Dylan Thomas went to Laugharne: “just came, one day, for the day, and never left; got off the bus, and forgot to get on again”. You can still do that these days – to visit his boathouse and Brown’s hotel, and take a wet walk up Sir John’s Hill – if you’re a wayfaring sort with change for the fare.
Most crucially, you have to travel on a Monday to Saturday. No buses depart from Carmarthen bus station on a Sunday any more. None at all. Not to Laugharne, not to Llansteffan, not to Kidwelly or Pendine or any of the other lovely resorts that are home for locals and great tips for tourists. Not in winter, not in summer.
They used to, but lately that stopped, although weekly pass prices stayed the same, and the train service remained as it ever was – which is, in fact, rather good, as far as the county town, itself a fine place to spend a Sunday, but still.
The 222 to Laugharne turns out to be one of the best-surviving routes; many other services have been whittled back far harder, their timetables now much more erratic and batty (on the first Wednesday of each month, it seems, south-west Wales is your oyster).
This is a pity not just because you can’t get to those places on your day off without a car, but because you can’t reach them on a bouncy, chattering bus, stuffed with people to talk to and babies to wave at, with wagging dogs and windows high enough for you to be able to see over the hedgerows. As the cuts gather pace places, like buses, (provided they stay free for pensioners) have the potential to function as community centres, without any residual stigma. Common cause unites you. You are all going in the same direction.
And no matter how burnt you might be by rush-hour experience, it’s hard not to retain a basic affection for the buses. People lean on them, perceive them as inherently friendly. Last week the story emerged of a woman who waited some considerable time for a bus by a trolley shelter in a Tesco car park asking passing shoppers: “Do you know what time these things run?” In the accompanying photo she appears optimistic rather than insane: leaning against the plastic wall, book out to pass the time. A lorry driver eating his lunch said he considered telling the woman her error, “but I didn’t have the heart to do it”. It’s hard to break it to someone that there is no bus – no moving roomful to take them home, or to new places where they might just stay.
Historians in glasshouses
You can get exceptional views from the 10th-floor balcony at the Tate Modern extension: across to St Paul’s, right to the Walkie-Talkie and the Gherkin and, in fact, millions of other steel and mirror offices and homes thrusting upwards. Look to the left and you can see into a few that are actually inhabited: straight into their living and bedrooms, kitted out with designer chairs and hi-tech clobber – no curtains or blinds or anything so chintzy.
An Archive on 4 radio show last week revealed that the art historian Nikolaus Pevsner actually preferred this sort of thing to the country churches and crumbling piles he had more cause to write about, mostly on account of his commitment to modernism, in part the result of a boyhood in clean-lined Leipzig. Amazing to devote your life to helping others appreciate something you don’t care for, but whose value you concede – even more so when you still hanker after the green, gleaming glass of home.
Comfort in nightwear
One thing that’s long troubled me is our snootiness about winceyette. It’s somehow acceptable for infants or the aged or nuns, yet the rest of us are scorned if we swaddle ourselves in the stuff. No such shirt or trousers exist, as far as I can see.
Yet in these days of endless rain and defeat, in which you need as much comfort as can be mustered, a top that cuddles you as you watch the news would surely be a help. Flannel has been made over by truckers and hipsters. If Brexit results in anything positive, perhaps the rehabilitation of winceyette is an achievable target.
