WAN A. HULAIMI/Elsewhere
A surreal experience on bleak, wet Welsh soil

2009/11/29

TWO things Welsh poured into Cardiff Central as I looked out of the train window: rain and rugby supporters. But rain has never dampened the spirit of a rugby nation; I learnt that as I marched out with their men and women, into the wet and cold. Some men were wearing funny hats to ward off the weather ghouls, and women too, going past police cordons to the back of the station where they vanished into the void where rugby fans go to on a rainy day. I had a date with Andre who had earlier directed me to this back of the station rendezvous, and there he was, with his smart-suit-getting-wet-in-the-drizzle look, and a taxi was waiting for us on the meter.

I never knew that I'd be an anorak with wet hair standing on Welsh soil on a Saturday, but there I was taking a reality check on what I was doing now. Three hours ago, I was in Paddington, London, looking in disbelief at a ticket that had expired four hours earlier. They had sent me a ticket for the crack of dawn so that I'd be able to be in Wales from the start at 8.30; while I, having planned to finish some work before the travel, had presumed that the ticket was for later in the day.

An easy mistake to make when two people are looking at the same thing in different ways. I had to buy another ticket, and there I was now on the train chugging into the Welsh border, looking out into a gloomy rain-washed landscape through the glass of the window. Yet the wet Wales I was staring at could have been behind the glass of a television screen. How does the brain know what is an illusion and what is "real"?

It was still raining heavily and my writing talk was to a group of sixty or so students at the fag end of their long day. How could these flagging spirits be roused to life when they were more inclined to sleep? It was just 5 o'clock but the winter moon had already risen a good hour, well it would, had the day not been so awful. Right, here's a trick I learned many, many years ago. All those in the back move forward now, and now that you're all seated, stand up and shake your arms loose from their sockets and twist and twirl your legs till you're all footloose and fancy free.

Right, how do you know when you're looking that that which you're looking at is real? That's a lot of stuff to be looking into after a bout of exercises to loosen the ankle joints, but what's knocked philosophy senseless is a good place to start being a writer. Write to awaken those very senses, I said, and hope that you'll be able to recreate an illusion of a pretty picture.

Thank you Wales on a rainy day, I thought, already it was writing its own script in this desperate hour. Now then, write down a verb in that blank sheet of paper in front of you, I said. And then put a story around that verb, and then write down what next? When we picked out six samples from the crowd, they were six passable beginnings to a short story. Who now says that writing isn't a doddle?

"Have you been on a train on a Saturday night?" someone asked as I was rushing back to the station for the 20.30. On the platform while waiting for the London train, I saw what the question was meant to convey. Cardiff Central on a Saturday night was life seen through the paintings of Bruegel the Elder. Drunken men making merry, grown ups in soppy hats, women, lip-stick smeared and dishevelled, policemen standing in a row waiting to nab the offenders.

In a coach of boisterous inebriation one tries to feign invisibility, and London's a mere three hours still. A man just a few feet from the back of my head was phoning all and sundry and very loudly. He was now in the process of telling a lady who could've been in Australia from the time difference that cropped up in the conversation in which a young lady he'd been out with had sent him a text message saying that he was a strange kisser. You're a strange kisser too, he texted her back; and then on reading back her message, he'd discovered that she'd written not "strange" but "good", an easy mistake to make when you're drunk I'd expect, shock horror. Throughout this narration, two drunken couples in the front were playing non-stop musical chairs.

And then we approached Stonehouse station. "Stonehouse is a very short platform," announced the guard. "The back two carriages will be at the platform, the front six will be past the platform. Please be sure that there is a platform before you attempt to open any of the train doors," he cautioned.

In other words, don't step out until you're sure there's reality beneath your shoe.

Wan A. Hulaimi also writes under the pen name of Awang Goneng. He can be reached at elsewhere@columnist.com