The Peculiar People

The Peculiar People...

I come From.

My father was born in a cottage hospital in 1942 Ruabon (Rhiwabon) not two miles from the farm I ended up growing up on. This Father was a mechanic in the R.A.F, who fixed Spitfires and saw action all over the world. Thomas O'Malley was also of Irish Catholic stock (though he "reformed") to marry Dylis Lewis (of feverish Methodist stock). He was not allowed to see his family, though there was an Aunt Lucy my father saw, and a cousin Patrica he saw on occasion.

He lived in a nice semi-detached house, next door to his also devoutly Methodist in-laws. The Lewis's were "well to do", strict and rather poe-faced people. My Great-Grandfather Lewis was a fireman, a hero, all brass buttons and saving men's life from terrible mining tragedies, notably Gresford Colliery fire (Gresford Disaster). Several Lewis's were killed and I wonder if we were related.

Dylis was for my father a figure of intense dislike. She was snobby, smothering, self-centered, petulant and weak. She was too close to her family and I know my father blamed her for his father's early death. Thomas had the vicious Irish temper, but he was also very funny, with a quick witted and course tongue when the mood struck him. After the war he worked his way up from shop keep to area manager of Co-op, at least according to my father.

My father grew very anti-religious (especially when he found jazz) but he also was very fond playing practical jokes and stunts, especially against teachers at his grammar school. Sometimes he got caught but mostly he didn't and he would tell me stories with relish.

On Smithy Lane I can remember Uncle Jason that when we were small we visited. I never heard his surname. Yet looking it he was likely a Lewis. He was a whistley old man with a couple of very annoying yappy (and nippy) tiny black poodles.

My father was an actor and he left school and joined a rep theatre company. He was amazing at voices and impersonations. That was his bread and butter when I knew him. It is odd but true to say where most people could not have told the impressions apart, I could recognise his voice, even as someone else when it came on the television, as sometimes it did.

I wonder sometimes at the characters he sometimes did, his booming baritone thumping out a sermon, or bursting into feverish song, being a reflection of the Lewis side of his life.

He was very "anti-welsh", in so much as he refused to allow me to gain a Welsh accent, and adopted the clip up the ear first, explain why later approach. Yet he met my "Mother" at the Welsh club in London where she was working as a bar-maid as a student. 

I remember nothing of being spoken to about my great-grand-mother, and I don't know her name.

I do know that I have many of the traits, good and bad from this muddled side of the family. My father, much to his own horror I imagine, is a terrible snob, and rather petulant and self-centered too. I could never figure out how you could love jazz and be so mind-meltingly racist. I certainly saw myself more Irish than Welsh as a child (which is silly as the O'Malley's had been Wales a couple of generation marrying other Welsh born, Irish Catholics long before my Granddad).

I always felt like an outsider, but maybe that was not about who I came from. It was only when I left that I felt my Welshness more keenly. With a sense of wonder and pride.

My "mother" is a Beynon. Her mother was a Jones (though her own mother was some sort of blue-blood who was disowned for marrying Albert Jones, a foundling found nearly naked wandering the mountain.)

Their own stories make my father's appear a series of Just William stories. In truth I have coal-dust, liquid copper, milk, blue blood, and magick in my veins. 

Journey's and Visions

Journey's and Visions

I have always had "dreams" and visions of this "other world". Up until recently I believed much of it was symbolic, especially of my own life. While some of my dreams are indeed symbolic and about this world it was brought to my attention that I have been visiting, and living in these other worlds all my life. I read a book by Kevin Hunter and to my extraordinary surprise he was describing places I knew.

About six or seven years ago I started writing a fictional story, except well; I would see it play out in my head and write it down as best as I could. There were many characters, lands, realms, magicks and so on. 

The story aside here is what was told to me by some of the great and good from this other place.

The world we see, and hear and touch, garden in, fight wars in and so on is one page of a big book. It happens to be roughly in the middle. Central Earth is a cross-roads. It is between all of the realms. There are several hundred races of beings that dwell within these places. They live and fight and have wars and romances. They travel easily between the realms and while what species you are born into has some bearing one where and how you travel which ruler you serve seems to be more important than your race, age or gender.

From what I have seen there are 15 realms. Seven ruled by the Queen and Seven by the King and Earth which is neutral. When they war earth becomes a haven for each side. Seven being  traditional faery number.

In their view the whole of this was created by the dragons, ancient to even these timeless folks. A fire dragon and a water dragon fell in love and in their passion they collided, rose and fell into each other. Their love was so great it created a world. Our world. A mix of both.

That is why when life did come to this place the first great creature that rose were of their parents likeness. To them earth is a sacred place. One they visit and sometimes live in. 

Yet they experience time very differently than us. They can also be in multiple worlds at once. Like a browser with tabs. One is no more real to them than another. 

Now when hominids (of all kinds) began to appear they delighted them. It was beautiful to see their own world being reflected in this one. When humans evolved proper they came to greet them, quite respectfully. Some were worshiped as Gods or Goddesses. Some were seen as demons, dark or evil. And so it went on. Then we lost some of our fear of them and our respect. At some point things got bloody and messy.

The Queens subjects began to try and create a bond, taking children and showing them their ways. To teach them and help us all. Some even married and had children with humans. Sometimes this ended well. They became shamans, wise-women, saints or great rulers. Sometimes badly with people burn or killed for being different. The King however did not share the same hope for us. He in fact despises people. It was never clear to me why, exactly. Yet his worse fear and prophecies about us have come to pass. The more of us that came the worse it was for the old highways and by-ways of the faery folk. Then in terms of stupid stuff people do, we created a weapon. One that has (and continues to have) huge impacts not only in our world, but theirs too. A nuclear weapon when it explodes does not only do horrific damage to the world we live in, from what I have been shown it rips a giant gaping hole through many pages of the book. Sometimes out world leaks into their realms. Sometimes theirs into ours and into each other.

The faery kept trying to patch and fix these holes. This and out habit or destroying things that a beautiful and sacred has not endeared us to them much at all. Yet those who are ruled by the Queen try to teach and help us heal the world. Those ruled by the King really don't like us at all. Most individual fae go on a person by person basis. 

I don't know if any of this is fact. Faery are trixie by nature, it is a good story though.

I do know that people with that faery can recognize each other almost instantly. They have sparkly blue lights that dance around them. They might do magick, they might not. 

They all dream in vivid colours and this feeling. A longing for a person or place. They have manners and morals not taught by human parents. They dream of grasslands that seem endless under the huge sky. Or rivers dark and smooth and deep, with green mossy banks through huge forests. They dream of waterfalls and shining seas, of castles that grow out of the rock. They dream of dancing and music. They dream of regal mountains and just sometimes, just sometimes they dream of dragons.