‘Let’s not do anything to make them feel nervous,’ he said.
‘Such as driving up to them with a military-grade weapon?’ asked Ian.
‘Mmm,’ said John.
Ian stopped the tank, looked again at the map, then made an announcement. ‘Well I think we’re going the wrong way anyway. Take a look at this.’ He sprawled the map onto John’s knees and pointed at the festival region. It showed that although they were heading for the main gate, the artists’ field was significantly closer: two fields to their right.
‘That’s interesting,’ said John. ‘Can we turn around?’
Half a mile ahead, a small group of police officers were starting to hear traces of the Beach Boys in the air. One security officer stepped forwards, looked through a pair of binoculars, and began muttering obscenities.
‘I can’t turn around, John, there’s traffic all around us,’ said Ian.
‘Well … we’ll just have to drive up to the police then. Maybe they’ll be nice. In fact, I have definitely heard that the police are nice around here.’
As John said those last words, a strange smell began leaking into their compartment. Ian looked confused for a second, then suddenly terrified – as a trickle of smoke wafted up his nose. John jumped up and pulled back the curtains, but he couldn’t see the passengers: the dope smoke was too thick.
‘Holy mother of Moses,’ uttered John.
Up the road, the Celtic harp recital was just beginning. Lime cordial was being served, while the festival spokesperson stood to the side of the stage, preparing to make his final TV appearance of the day.
‘Ah, those lovely harps,’ he sighed. ‘Did you know that this festival dates back to the druidic ceremonies of the twelfth century?’
‘Yes, I had heard something about that,’ smiled the presenter. ‘Right – shall we begin the filming then?’
‘Hang on!’ interrupted the spokesperson. He narrowed his eyes, as if sensing a distant threat. Then he whispered: ‘What is that terrible noise?’
The rumble seemed to almost come from deep underground, but then it turned aggressive, feral. An old man sat in his deckchair began bleating and waving his stick in the air. The spokesperson chewed his fingernails. Then it dawned on him what the noise was: ‘The Beach Boys!’
The tank was rumbling downhill at quite a slow speed, but it was also shaking uncontrollably as it hit all the bumps in the field. Behind it was the brown gate. The brown gate was good. Ahead of it was the blue gate, though – and nobody quite knew what the blue gate was all about. Ian and John started babbling.
‘Look!’ shouted John. ‘A gap in the hedge – straight ahead!’
Ian squinted at the hedge. ‘That’s not a gap!’
‘It’s the field we need, Ian. Head towards it, just head towards it …’
He put one hand on the wheel.
‘Get off my wheel! Look at your eyes – you’ve got the eyes of a madman!’
They burst through the hedge, slammed up a steep incline, and stopped. The tank stood motionless for a few seconds, silent except for the sound of gently creaking metal and a cool breeze.
Inside, Cian lit a match. ‘Rats,’ he muttered, lifting a vinyl to the light and tracing a scratch with his finger. After a quick check to see if everyone was OK, Gruff lifted the hatch and peered out. Looking across the field, he could see a big tent at the far side, with the sign ‘ARTISTS’ ENTRANCE’ next to it. He looked back down into the tank, where the quiet sneeze of laughter had overcome his bandmates.
‘I think we’re in the correct field,’ he announced.
The rest of the day panned out well for the festival: bards were appointed, ale was drunk, eighteenth-century costumes were worn, and the tank finally found its home – in a field where teenagers could boogie to Cian’s techno.
Later in the evening, the festival spokesperson wandered down to the stage where Super Furry Animals were playing. He slurped on a ginger ale while tapping his feet and humming along. One thing seemed curious, however: the crowd were singing along to an instrumental performance. Stranger still, although some were singing in Welsh, others were singing in English and … was that even Japanese he heard? He walked into the audience and spotted a girl handing out lyric sheets.
‘Would you mind if I took a look at this?’ he smiled, grabbing a pamphlet. At the top of the first page was an illustration of a dragon screwing a man up the arse, while the lyrics below were printed in a variety of translations, a different one on each page. Finally, a simple instruction: ‘SING ALONG IN WHICHEVER LANGUAGE YOU LIKE’. The spokesperson put his quivering hand over his mouth, then looked back at the stage.
The contradiction of voices as they blended into one another made for an almighty sound – indecipherable, certainly – but also a strange kind of international language.
It was a misty morning in 1974, and four-year-old Gruff Rhys was being carried up the side of a mountain, perched on his dad’s shoulders. Once they’d reached a level where they could see the valley before them, his father put him down and pointed up to where the rocks hit the mist.
‘That, Gruff, is the peak of the mountain!’
Gruff nodded.
‘Unfortunately, my lad, the peak of the mountain is the most boring part. But! Take a look over there, at the dip between the rocks. Do you see?’
He pointed slightly further down, to where a pathway seemed to wind its way cryptically between the hills before disappearing round the corner.
‘Those are the passes – the gateways between the mountains!’
Gruff nodded.
‘It’s along those passes that you’ll find different peoples meeting and interacting with each other. Historically they are a link between cultures … a connection between the towns.’ He put his son back on his shoulders and set off again.
‘It’s not the peaks of the mountains that matter, lad,’ he announced. ‘It’s the gaps between them!’
Gruff’s family had recently moved to the slate-quarrying town of Bethesda from Cardiff. This had mainly been because Gruff’s dad had taken a job as county secretary in nearby Caernarfon, but Bethesda also appealed because it was a Welsh-speaking area.
‘My grandfather had lost the Welsh language by one generation,’ says Gruff today, ‘so my father spoke English with him and Welsh with his mother – and could never imagine speaking to either of them in any other language.’
By contrast, both Gruff’s parents spoke to him, his brother and his sister in Welsh: the family was going back to its roots.
