Blue Moon's trip around the UK

As I am sure you know, for Welsh speakers Swansea is not Swansea but Abertawe. I know enough Welsh i.e. about a dozen words to know that this means ‘The mouth of the River Tawe.’

Now, being the sort of culturally sensitive chap I am, I like knowing this but I would never dream of using the Welsh name because I am very obviously English and that would – I think – be rather patronising. Although perhaps I should ask an actual Welsh person – after all they do want everyone to call Snowdonia Eryri, which is a tricky place to start.

This lack of use of Welsh has quite coloured my experience of Swansea however, because the word Abertawe is everywhere, and why not? The trouble is, in my mind I have always pronounced it ‘Aber-taw’ , rhymes with ‘raw’. This apparently is totally wrong, it is Aber-towie as in, well, here’s the problem, the only word I can think of that rhymes is TOWIE as in The Only Way Is Essex, where, coming from very near Essex, I know you pronounce every vowel as short as possible, as in ‘Ow!’ not ‘Oh’ (which is how you would pronounce it if you came from, for instance, Chelsea).

This should of course not be a problem since I am never going to say Abertawe out loud, but it could have been truly awful since Swansea Marina is inside the barrage of the River Tawe, and to get there you have to call the Tawe Lock on the VHF and ask them to let you in. I was all ready to call the Tawe as in Raw Lock, but luckily spoke to the marina on the phone first, where the friendly non-Bristolian advised me to call the Towie Lock.
I was taken aback and had to rehearse the word several times before I could summon up the courage to press transmit. And then when I did I got no answer, so I had to call again repeatedly. Surely I had got it wrong, and they ignore Englishmen like me when we mispronounce their river? Eventually he replied and let me in and was as welcoming as everyone else in Marina Abertawe and indeed Abertawe more broadly, this being Wales not Bristol.

The only problem, and for me it has quite spoiled my stay, is that I now have an image in my mind of The Only Way is Essex, wherever I go and whoever I speak to. I am really not a fan of TOWIE and have only half-glimpsed episodes but I know it’s not for me. If you want Essex then move 30 miles up the coast to Barry Island where they have sticks of rock and T shirts and keyrings and whole parades of cafés celebrating the Hands across the Channel spirit of Essex and Wales coming together. Instead I have horrible images of Estuary Bling and fake tan swimming before my eyes, even as I walk past such culturally significant places as the Ganolfan Dylan Thomas Abertawe and the Amgueddfa Genedlaethol y Glannau Abertawe.

It’s probably just as well that I am now sitting on a train back to Llundain Paddington (I do love Welsh train announcements, they sing the names of the stations, even the English ones) for a few days R&R. I’ll try and put this out of my mind. Expect no posts for a bit, you don’t want to hear about life in Dartmouth Park, and you need time off from this drivel. And then I have my first guest on the boat and I’ve registered the nervousness with which people wonder if I will write entertaining but caustic posts about my guests’ annoying little habits. I doubt I will.