Swansea

We were at the Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea today - tucked just off the main thoroughfare that runs along Oyster Bay on the "other" (posher, according to the locals) side of the River Tawe. A full house again, in this lovely theatre.  

The following morning, walking along Oyster Bay, past Dylan Thomas' old drinking haunt in Mumbles, the sun's fresh and clear in the sky. It feels sacrilegious to have a fag. Sulling a pure beauty. So I move off from the promenade and sit on a low wet wall in the carpark and light up. Self-confined in the sin bin. Which is how I feel after the 50% cut. Half my life has been hacked off. In the time that remains - I am 54 now - can I recover the half?

One of the things I've begun to appreciate of late is how much more energy I need: I'd only eaten 5 toasts washed down with weak coffee when I had my mope along Oyster Bay. Now, flush with my favourite Chinese (crispy Peking Duck), I'm aghast at the maudlin tone of the morning. What? Already given up? Don't given the so-called mandarins of the Arts so easy vindication of their decision - of course I'll fight on! Tara is, and always has been, more than simply a touring theatre company. It is an idea, that burns as critically today as it did during that long hot summer in 1976 when the idea was born. The idea of mapping the new post-War contours of this country. Contours that wind uncertainly between East and West. 

Yesterday, the Archbishop seemed to have lifted the veil on some of these uncertain contours, when he talked of the "inevitability" of some aspects of Sharia law being adopted within the legal framework of Britain. Whoa! In the hysterical responses to his musings, we see the dangerous rise in intolerance, characterized by a clear backing away from the sensibility of multiculturalism that shaped so much of post-War culture. The re-assertion of "core British values", as the PM is increasingly trumpeting, is worryingly close to what we'd hear from the National Front and the BNP in the 70s and 80s, when they talked of 'Britain for the British'. They meant white British only, of course.

I have always been against purities and authenticities - the 'pure blood', the 'authentic approach to Shakespeare's verse' - as arbitrary expressions of power. Life (and certainly modern life) is the in-authentic, impure "justle" of multiculturalism.  Why should the actions of 4 young British men, who bombed London commuters in defense (or glorification) of what they saw as their religion, discredit the sensibility of multiculturalism?