Guest Column
Wales: My Country and its Influence on my Writing by Catherine McCarthy
Wales, one of four small countries which make up the United Kingdom, is a land of contradiction and contrast. From the former coal mining valleys in the south, to the mountainous National Parks in the north, Wales is renowned for its language, its friendly people, its national flag which features a red dragon (Y Ddraig Goch), and... rain! Yes, we have plenty of rain here. And one more thing: in Wales, sheep outnumber people four to one. As a writer, my surroundings provide a wealth of opportunity for writing. I grew up in the industrial south, and went on to teach there for twenty-eight years. As a child, the landscape, with its many coal mines (almost all of which are now closed), was pretty bleak. Slag-heaps and abandoned coal carts were our playground, and after a day playing outdoors we would arrive home with faces as filthy as the coal miners’. In every valley, towering metal structures loomed out of the ground. Winding wheels groaned and spun as they lowered the men into pit bottom, and you knew, even as a child, that ‘down there’ was pitch dark, nothing but coal dust which corroded lungs and turned wounds into everlasting blue-black scars. I remember an uncle who wore one such scar above his left eye. It fascinated me, the colour. If your dad didn’t work down the pit, your uncle did, or your grandfather, or neighbour. It was impossible to be brought up in a coal mining town and not be influenced by it. 62 | UncagedBooks.com
I’m a little too young (just) to remember the Aberfan disaster which featured in the Netflix series, The Crown. However, the tragedy struck just a few miles from where I lived, and, like J.F.K’s assassination or 9/11, no-one forgot where they were when they heard the news. Days of relentless rain caused 150 000 tonnes of coal sludge to avalanche onto the primary school, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Those were the kind of stories I grew up with. And those are the kind of stories that stick. After teaching in South Wales for twenty-eight years, I escaped the valleys and moved to West Wales where the grass is greener, beautiful beaches can be found within spitting distance, and Welsh is still most peoples’ first language. Now I’m free to write every day, free to roam the scenic coast-path or amble beside the many rivers, and life is glorious! My husband is an artist/photographer, so we often pack a picnic and set off on a shoot at a moment’s notice (or when the rain finally stops). We adore old churches and graveyards and can often be found haunting such places. Ancient churches provide a wealth of story potential: unique atmosphere, incredible architecture which seems to defy everything the Welsh climate throws at it, and they also offer a dip into personal stories inscribed on gravestones. My novella, Mosaic, which published in August 2023, is set in such a church. It’s the story of a stained glass artist who is asked to renovate the window of a 13th century church, nestled in ancient woodland. I don’t want to give too much away, but what she uncovers during the restoration is far more dramatic than she expected. Many of my stories are set on or close to the Atlantic coast. During the pandemic I wrote a story called Ysbrid Y Môr (Spirit of the Sea). The story was published in a