A Week On The M4

It occurs to me that making progress through the typical week is rather like a journey on the M4 motorway. I traveled from Swansea to London recently, along the M4, and contemplated this thought as I journeyed.

Monday is like leaving Swansea after a restful weekend, like setting out on your journey. Duty and adventure call and, although you look back longingly at home and a warm bed, you travel with purpose and perhaps some degree of reconciliation. This simply has to be done.

Tuesday is rather like Newport. You feel as though you have already come such a long way but there is yet so much further to go. A sense of resignation sets in as you accept there is no turning back.

Wednesday is like arriving at the Severn Bridge. Surely this is a major stage on your journey, signalling real progress made. Of course, the other side of the bridge is England but, as my mother used to say, you can't have everything and, while the road actually rises from the bridge, you feel as if the hardest part is behind you and you are on the downward ride to your destination.

Thursday is like Swindon. Here is where reality kicks in and reminds you that, despite your effort and perseverance, there is yet some distance to travel. Like someone popping into the pub Thursday evening for a drink and to find consolation with fellow travelers, you pull into the Leigh Delamare service area for a much needed break.

Friday is like the Reading service area. There is a real sense of an end in sight. Soon you will see the familiar signs for Heathrow Airport and you eagerly count down the last few junction numbers. But this part of the motorway proves much busier than at your starting point. People are driving faster, more erratically at times. It is just like a Friday afternoon when the weekend is in sight yet there is still much to before you can to walk away from work and enjoy your destination in peace.

The weekend is like London, your destination and, just like visiting any big city, there are highs and lows, bright lights and dark corners. The weekend, like the city, has its attractions and distractions, fulfillment and disappointment, but seldom lives up to its reputation. The weekend is, in anticipation, more than it is in its in realization. It brings rest, recuperation, and hopefully a fresh resolve to make better of things but, come Monday morning...

St David’s Centre, Swansea: Stealing our Streets

Someone has finally woken up – or perhaps sobered up? - and realised what a carbuncle was foisted on Swansea in 1982 with the development of  St David’s Shopping Centre.

Perhaps the developers thought it would be regarded a gem but, like the aforementioned sore, it is red, painful to bear, ugly to look at and everyone wonders why it wasn’t removed ages ago.

Standing as a physical barrier between the magnificent Anglican St Mary’s Church and the lovely Catholic St David’s Priory Church and school it has been largely empty and continually moribund since some surely inebriated architect with a friend in the red brick business threw it up, declaring this the future of retail development. We can only hope he or she went on to make a career in drainage or demolition, saving future generations from the horrors of their vapid imagination.

The centre, along with the adjacent and now vacant Oldway House will be knocked down, at least in part, and ,Swansea will, in its place, be blessed with a “temporary” car park with a view to another, hopefully more imaginative, retail development.

I understand this might be an enclosed development and, while I give a big hurrah for the removal of the current eyesore, I an nervous about more of our city centre streets becoming part of a private business.

I wonder how many people have realised that, while places like the more successful Quadrant shopping centre [left], opened in 1979,  are all very nice Swansea citizens are effectively robbed of our streets when the centre closes and when it is open "normal" street activity is restricted.

I wonder how many sit in the centre of the Quadrant [right] and realise that around them are streets, thoroughfares that are only public areas as far as the public are allowed to use them by the Council that “owns” these streets. Think of the normal activities you might expect to be able to be involved in on a street and count those activities no longer “permitted” here.

No smoking, no dogs, no bicycles, no games and, once it closes, no entry so you had better make your way around the long way to get from one end of the city centre to the other. Missed your bus? You might have caught it if you had been able to dash through Wassail Square [that’s it in the picture above] to the bus station. It is a trade off, of course, and most might be happy with it but the privatisation of public areas I suggest is something we should be concerned about, especially with plans for St David’s Centre.

Rather than enclosing another big area of our city, perhaps an extension of the Quadrant,  the property between St Mary's and St David's Priory Church would make a good, open second city-centre square around which shops could be fitted and without the now apparently ubiquitous giant TV spoiling our socialising. By incorporating them into this plan, the view from the one church to the other would enhance the city centre and open up what has for too long been an eyesore and obstruction, and a vital thoroughfare between the city centre and the Marina would remain.

Franco’s

Christmas has arrived as far as I am concerned since yesterday I had my first Christmas dinner. It was so very good that any subsequent festive meals have a lot to live up to and believe me comparisons are unavoidable. It was so generous that I have to go back next week to have my Christmas pudding, and the coffee…

But do I let you in on the secret or will I be making things more difficult for myself?  Every other Saturday Ann and I go into Swansea to our favourite cafe, more often if we can. Its always bustling but we always find a table as our host constantly busies himself making sure that no one is turned away and even if you have to wait it is always worth it, and the coffee…

The menu is colourful and varied and the specials on the board are always worth trying (which is where I found my Christmas dinner). The Italian dishes are especially good, and did I mention the coffee?

You know that, wherever you go, when you order a coffee you are taking a risk. I mean you don’t expect much at motorway services or at Sid’s greasy spoon, but even in places that claim to be dedicated to the art of serving a good cup of coffee, where reputation rests on the quality of the java and little else, the good stuff does not often make it to your table.

Well, I know a place where the good stuff is standard faire and a man at whose feet baristi of the world should sit and learn. Franco has a modest but popular cafe in Singleton Street, Swansea, just across from the Quadrant shopping centre and around the corner from the city’s bustling market. He drives his longsuffering wife crazy with Dean Martin music and serves coffee that is like the ambrosia served up to the gods, sustaining, invigorating, liquid gold and all served with a smile in an atmosphere of good cheer.

There now, I have told you so if I can’t find a table when next I go I have only myself to blame. On the other hand, what civilised man could possibly keep such a good thing to himself. See you in Franco's. Bon appétit!

FRANCO