The real world?

For a long time my father told me that I should ‘start living in the real world’ - he still does sometimes and I’ve never really understood why. What is so great about the real world? It seems pretty dull to me and always has. From an early age I’ve preferred the ‘not real’ world and when, at the age of nine, I broke my arm after not vaulting a vaulting horse, my interest in the unreal became even stronger.

My broken arm - caused by me not vaulting the horse - was in part due to the teacher who was meant to stop me from coming to any harm as I vaulted. It was her job to stand by the ‘too high’ horse and steady me if I got into trouble. Unfortunately she’d been distracted for a moment and I fell to the floor breaking my arm at a more or less ninety degree angle just below the elbow.

That evening poor Miss Mathews came to my house with a brand new paperback book – Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis. As soon as she’d left I carried it to my room and escaped the real world for the very unreal world of Narnia.

For the next couple of years I moved from one unreal world to another dependent on what book I was reading at the time. Soon I’d expanded into paintings and music as I started to realise that it was better to live in an unreal world of my own making - or at least one that I’d borrowed from Breugel, Cole Porter, Ray Bradbury, or even David Bowie– than live in the mundane real world all of the time.

So here I am today still jumping between worlds. Most of the time I slip away from reality through losing myself in a book, dipping into the landscape of a painting, disappearing into a radio play. I hardly ever manage to travel by television, although films are no problem at all – perhaps television is too real or maybe it’s just me - and of course there is my blog.

But it isn't as simple as that - the unreal can co-exist with the real, and I’ve found that there are some places in the real world that aren’t quite as real as others and where reality isn’t as real as it should be. I think that most of us have been to places where we’ve felt that they, or we, or both, aren’t quite ‘here’. Places that are a little disjointed - outside of our full reality. I call them ‘flux places’. I’m going to tell you about a real ‘flux place’ that I’ve been to, so that you can go there if you ever have the chance…or the need.

Sometimes I drive right down to the western tip of the Llyn and stand on a small mountain looking out towards, Ynys Enlli, ‘The Island of the Tides’ - Bardsey Island - as it rises from the sea like some half submerged sea monster.

You could easily drown in the tides that swirl around it - sometimes I almost do; losing myself in the whirlpools and swells of the sound. It is said that the Vikings gave the island its English name – the Bard’s island – and even from the distant mainland you can hear the poetry and taste the magic. Others say it’s the Isle of Avalon and that Arthur was brought here after his final battle to heal in Merlin’s magical castle made from glass, they say that they are both buried on the island – and as I look and imagine, I believe them.

I went there once, by boat from Porth Meudwy, rubber dinghy then fishing boat, alighting on the dock to the welcome of barking seals and the whistle of the wind across a near treeless landscape. I spent time on tiny beaches calling to the seals and trying to understand their replies as I walked to the lighthouse at the far end of the island, tasting the salt blowing in from the Irish Sea.

Saint Cadfan built a monastery here and thousands of pilgrims made the long, hard trek to Bardsey along the Northern pilgrim’s path from Clynnog Fawr. A long ago Pope decreed that three pilgrimages to Bardsey were equivalent to one pilgrimage to Rome. Some choose to stay and die here and they say that twenty thousand saints are buried on this tiny fragment of dream. If you look carefully you can almost see them.

In the 19th century over a hundred fishermen and farmers along with their families lived on the island, it was a hard and remote life. Lord Newborough (the island’s English owner) decided to make the oldest male on the island ‘Brenin Enlli’ – king - to settle disputes and keep order. The king wore a tall, ornate crown made from tin, painted gold that looked like King Neptune’s crown. This tradition continued until the death of the last king in 1927, his name was Love Pritchard. I know a direct descendent of his – have talked with him about kings and crowns.

Sometimes as I stand on the mountain, looking out to Avalon, I imagine King Arthur, Merlin, Saints and Pilgrims, pirates and kings, tin crowns and dreams - and I slip away from the real world to another place.

Of course you realise that what I've written here could all be imaginings - I wouldn't know -and you can never really know where reality ends and the unreality begins can you?
Perhaps that is what the real world is all about?