7
Friday, February 28, 2014
IT was a sad coinci dence that Whalley Owen, a patriotic stal wart of the Torrevieja expat community, passed away a couple of days before his beloved Wales ham mered France in rugby union’s Six Nations Championship. Or was it? I prefer to think that Whalley was having such a ball in his new celestial sur roundings that he decided to orchestrate the outcome of the big game as a gift to the legion of Taffs he left behind. The 273 scoreline, Wales's best victory over their Gallic rivals in the Six Nations championship, came as the socalled experts were predicting an embarrassing defeat for Sam Warburton’s dragons. A few weeks ago, Whalley and his wife Marion sat in the lounge of my villa watching one of the autumn rugby internationals and reminisc ing about our mutual roots in South Wales. Half a century ago, we were all living in Pontypridd and although we didn't know each other at the time, there was an air of the surreal about this Spanish gathering of kindred souls on unfamiliar territory. Here we were, far away
WHALLEY’S DAI OF JUDGEMENT Whalley Owen from home, enjoying a sun shine existence a million miles from the grey, grey bleakness of home. Green, green grass? Don't make me laugh. No wonder Marion and the family opted not to take Whalley's remains back to the valleys. The poor fella would have drowned posthu mously. Whalley's death came painlessly, and relatively sud denly, at a time when Welsh
folk are ironing their old daf fodils and preparing for St David's Day. Back home, the land of my fathers is preparing for the baring of its patriotic soul and unleashing of the Dragon on the complacent followers of St George. And yet the profile of Wales's national day seems relatively low outside the Principality – unlike the furore of St Patrick's Day, when whooping American hype generates the impres sion that half the world has roots in the Paddy fields of Ireland. I guess I'll have to settle for wearing a daffodil (if I can find one) plus a few choruses of Cwm Rhondda in the shower. That's the hymn the prayer book calls 'Guide Me O Thy Great Redeemer' – and which was sung as such at Whalley's funeral service in La Siesta Church this
Patriot game: The Welsh players prepare for battle
week. It also happens to be the mantra of Welsh rugby – a tune synonymous with the national sport for as long as I can remember and upstaged only by the National Anthem
itself. And I don't mean that dismal dirge God Save The Queen. For some inexplicable rea son, the English lack passion when it comes to expressing national pride...so much so
The day I trapped the Trapp troupe THE death of 99yearold Maria, last of the original Von Trapp family singers, took me back 20 years to the day I was asked to find out what happened to the REAL people por trayed in The Sound of Music. In those days, background materi al was extremely limited online – but I managed to Trapp the legendary musical troupe down at their holiday complex in the United States, where they took refuge after fleeing their native Austria in 1938.
So how true to life was the story as portrayed in the 1965 film classic, I asked Johannes Von Trapp, President of the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, “Well, put it this way,’’ said the youngest of Captain Georg Von Trapp’s ten children – and his third by second wife Maria. “If it had been accurate, Julie Andrews would have had a pillow under her dress as she danced over the mountains into Switzerland. My mother was eight
months pregnant at the time I was born just a month later!’’ Ironically, I came across an item this week expanding on what Johannes told me in my research for a Scottish Sun article.. It revealed that while The Sound of Music was generally based on Baroness Maria's 1949 book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, there were many alterations and omissions. l Maria came to the family in 1926 as a tutor for her late name
sake, who was recovering from scarlet fever, not as governess to all the children. l Maria and Georg married in 1927, not just before the Nazi takeover. l Maria fell in love with the chil dren at first sight, not their father. When he asked her to marry him, she was not sure if she should aban don her religious calling but was advised by the nuns to do God's will and marry Georg.
that the masses accept what must be the least inspiring National Anthem on the planet. No wonder The Queen smiles so rarely. The inces sant request to the Almighty to save her probably bores her as much as it does 99 per cent of those who have to endure the misery. Just listen to the thunder ing anthems of France, Italy and indeed Wales and you'll get an inkling of what REAL motivation is all about. Surely it wouldn't be too much of a problem for England to switch to the inspiration of Land of Hope and Glory or Rule Britannia. And the time to do it is NOW because I'm beginning to wonder whether Her Majesty actually wants to be saved.