An Old Shropshire Oak Called Shroppiemon

I first came across Shoppiemon on Twitter back in January. In 140 characters this Tweeter was the living embodiment of Georgina Jackson’s Shropshire Word Book. I’m not native Shropshire born myself, but armed with my own copy of the Word Book I ventured a reply, saying Georgina Jackson would be proud of him. Little did I know what I’d started. Shroppiemon tweeted back almost immediately, with far more grace and verve than I had mustered, saying that his gallus chundering [ie. muttering, collected from Newport] wasna quite of Georgina Jackson’s standard but that I had galvered him [goodness knows where 'galvered' comes from - not everything Shroppiemon writes, by any means, comes out of the Word Book]. After that he started reading My Tonight From Shrewsbury and, the next thing I knew, the blogsite had found an advocate and I had found a friend.

For those of you who don’t know, published in 1879 Georgina Jackson’s Word Book lists words and phrases spoken in Shropshire dialect as it was back in those days. It gives a grammatical structure to these words and phrases, and lists the villages and towns in which they could  be found.  You’d be hard pressed today to find in common useage many of the words Georgina Jackson collected. So much has changed since then, including people’s speech. Even in the forty years I’ve been living in Shropshire, distinctions between village dialects have blurred. Is there anybody left who can tell the difference between Pontesbury voices, for example, and those of the Stiperstones, just a few short miles away? Who knows where ‘Upper Wonner’ refers to any more?  

Shroppiemon, I guess, would know. Regardless of what I write about, he has an uncanny knack of tweeting me that little bit extra and always knowing more.  He describes himself as a collector. It would be great to see his memorabilia exhibited in some way.  Great too, if he ever felt inspired to tell the story of Shrewsbury as he’s seen it through his own eyes.  Shroppiemon is a tweeter with attitude, and it’s attitude as much as anything that makes a good book. Shroppiemon has opinions - and he’s not afraid of expressing them.

Take Princess House for example, a horrid 1960s building [for those of you who’ve never seen it] currently being extended out into our historic town square. Here’s Shroppiemon on the subject of the Secretary of State’s role in this unfortunate state of affairs: ‘The s of s anna gotta look at it. It shudna bin put up in the furst place. Owd nick himsen couldna built a more drodsome pigcote.’

I’ve heard Princess House called a few things, but ‘drodsome pigcote’ beats them all. ‘Sebunctious’ is another of Shroppiemon’s favourite words, and in the interview below he comes up with ‘kerbiffleypump, which I can find no meaning for and I'm guessing is a word entirely Shroppiemon's own.  

If Georgina Jackson were alive today, then Twitter would be in her Word Book, listed as a source of words and phrases alongside Shropshire’s villages and towns. She’d be fascinated by what Shroppiemon’s doing with Old Shropshire, twisting it this way and that, reinventing it to work in new ways for new times.  After all, isn’t that’s what always happens to language? Isn’t that why Jackson recorded it, understanding that it would change? In her wildest imaginings, though, she’d never have countenanced what Shroppiemon’s doing now, putting Old Shropshire on Twitter and giving it a whole new life.

So who is Shroppiemon? I have to come clean and say that I don’t know. He and I have been following each other on Twitter for months now, and I’m no closer now to discovering his identity than when I began. All I can say with confidence is that Shroppiemon is to Shropshire what Batman is to Gotham City - and Twitter is the mask behind which he hides. 

However, after terse negotiations [how could they be anything else at 140 characters at a tweet?] I’m thrilled to be able to tell you that I’ve persuaded Shroppiemon to be interviewed online. ‘Ow do, lass. Here goes nothing,’ he emailed back to me with answers to my questions.   And of course they’re not ‘nothing’.  To the contrary. See for yourselves.  Shroppiemon in his own words. Enjoy. 

1. MY TONIGHT FROM SHREWSBURY:  Where were you born, and where did you grow up? 

SHROPPIEMON: I was born in Cross Houses hospital on my mother's 21st birthday. 'Er obviously didna want a boikin for a present and soon left. This meant that I got ter be that most Shropshire of Shropshireness - granny reared.

I 'ave spent most o'me life in the town of Salop but shroppieoomon says that 'er is still waitin' for me ter grow up.

2. MTFS:  Where did you go to school?  Can you share with us a couple of memories of school days? 

SMON: I went ter Wilfred Owen, then Holy Cross Cof E, an' then the Priory (the owd boys’ school, not the modern 'un). I had such a gud time at school that I forgot ter leave with many qualifications. The more we got towd off at the Priory for sayin' inna, gonna, canna etc the more we said 'em,

3. MTFS:  And town life?  What are your earliest memories of Shrewsbury?  How do you remember it, looking back?

SMON: I dunna think that Salop has changed too much, ter be fair. Salopians 'ave changed far more - the fust couple of verses of "Think For A Minute" by the Housemartins sum this up so well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnLFCY2vWoI 

When we was childers we had a milkmon an' a breadmon, the Corona mon brought pop, Davenports brought beer and Mr Jones brought the veg on his horse drawn dray - an' I miss em all. Havin' worked at the Abbey, the Castle, Clive House, Rowley's House and shops and cafes in the past, I feel that the town is gettin' on jest fine without my meddlin' these days. But I still love ter help promote it, an' the rest o'Shropshire, whenever I con.

4. MTFS: Was Shroppiemon created specifically for Twitter, or was he active before that?

SMON: I am a barley child o'twitter. John Wood Warter wrote "An Old Shropshire Oak" about an anonymous tree watchin' over our sebunctious county an' I thought that through the power o'twitter I could do summat similar. (So far I 'ave bin muchly wrong)

5. MTFS: When and why was the decision made to use Old Shropshire for your tweets? Do you talk the way you write?

SMON: That is a gud question Fitzyoomon,I dunna think that I use it enough, but shroppieoomon thinks that I use it too much.

6. MTFS: Georgina Jackson died before publication of the Shropshire Word Book, and it was her friend, Charlotte Burne [of Shropshire Folk-Lore], who brought it to public attention. Do you know much about these two interesting women, who I presume both came from Shropshire?

SMON: Georgina Jackson was actually thrum Cheshire, Charlotte Burne was a vicar's daughter and moved several times around Shropshire. I anna got a clue when I furst discovered 'em.  They both jest snuck in ter me sub-conscious somehow. They jest allus sim ter 'ave bin thar. I con still remember the kerbiffleypump feelin' when I walked out of Candle Lane books clutchin' my copy of the Shropshire Wurd Book.

7. MTFS: Over the last year there hasn’t been much I’ve written about – and I’ve written on a wide range of subjects – that you haven’t been able to add something to.  Putting it baldly, how come you know so much?

SMON: Ar, I know a little about a lot lass. I love Shropshire and everythin' ter do with 'er, so I love findin' out things that I didna know an' I love ter share it too. I have ter howd me sen back when I realise that I have crossed the very thin line betwixt interestin' others an' borin' em - shroppieoomon thinks that I tend ter realise this too late for 'er likin'.

8. MTFS:  As far as you’re concerned, what’s the best thing about Shrewsbury?  What’s the worst thing about Shrewsbury?  What’s the biggest threat that Shrewsbury faces today?

SMON: Wurst = Princess House. Best = jest about everything else

9. MTFS: Caped crusaders are renown for the things they do for their home towns.  What would you like to do for Shrewsbury?

SMON: How long have I got? I 'ood save the Stew, knock down Princess House - or at least stop 'em filling the bottom in - open a university, restore the Shrewsbury Cut (canal), make all public transport and out-of-town parkin' free of charge, and fund it by dearer parkin' in the loop. I would mek Sunday the day ter be sin in town, a sort of modern version of the monkey walk.

Selfishly I 'ood reinstate the Loggerheads back on the Shrewsbury Town  shirts.

10. MTFS: Is there ever a moment when you’ll feel it’s right to take off your mask and reveal yourself to the people of Shrewsbury?

SMON: It would be more like revealin' me sen ter one or two on twitter than the whole of Shrewsbury.

11. MTFS:  Be kind, Shroppiemon, to those of us who are gnawing away, like a dog with a bone, at who you really are. Give us a clue.

SMON: A clue 'oodna help as I inna well known, but I will buy yer a drink one day lass, shroppieoomon ull join us too.

 MTFS:  Thank you, Shroppie. I’ll hold you to that. And thank you for your support throughout the year. Knowing that you’re out there cheering on the sidelines and retweeting My Tonight From Shrewsbury’s posts has been a massive encouragement.  Writing this blog has been a bit like running a marathon. It needs all the supporters it can get, and what you’re doing is greatly appreciated.  When we meet I reckon I need to buy you a drink too. In the meantime, though, any final words you’d like to say?

SMON: I love anything an 'eveything ter do with Shropshire, not jest Shrewsbury. I collect books, pictures, signs, postcards, owd tat memorabilia, bottles clocks etc

I never realised until ternite how important women are ter Shropshire folklore - G.Jackson, C, Burne, Lady Milnes-Gaskell, M.Webb, E.Pargeter, yer gud sen, H.Stretton, Shroppieoomon, thrum the Caradoc & Severn Valley Mrs Hayward, Jean Hughes. Less famous but equally important, Annie E Smout, Sheila Hamer and Valerie Kilford.   

The oomon I left until last is Val Littlehales. She is an artist, storyteller, teacher, farmer and best of all a poet. She writes and recites her poems in Shropshire dialect (sadly I have misplaced my copy of her live cassette).

Thank 'ee very much for yo'em interest.

regards, shroppiemon

PS. One other addition I'd like to make if possible is to mention how terrible that Mary Webb's Spring Cottage m'appen ter be demolished. They conna, wonna an' inner gonna:  http://www.stcra.org.uk/2013/10/spring-cottage-application-to-demolish/

A Bloomin' Golden 2013

This is going to be a very short blog post.  It's ten past one in the morning and I've no business being on my computer. I should be asleep. In fact I nearly was asleep, but then I picked up on Twitter that Shrewsbury has won the Gold Award in the small city category for Britain in Bloom, so I thought that any of you who read my affectionate post about Shrewsbury going mad on Bloom Judging Day might like to know what the outcome was.  All those ladies of the night hanging around Fish Street, all those spinners and dancers in the Square, all those hanging baskets, and busy gardeners, and ornamental flower beds in the Dingle and just about everywhere else in the town - you all did it.  You charmed the judges.  Shrewsbury won. 

The Last Real Prince of Wales. Arguably.

The story of Henry III aint exactly impressive.  Given that kings in his day were meant to get out there and make their presence felt on the battlefield, Henry was an arty-farty weakling, more interested in kneeling before Holy Relics than leaping on his horse and taking to arms.  Sure enough, there were occasions when he did go out in battle, but he wasn’t much good at it and, by the end of his reign, what his father Bad King John hadn’t lost from the Plantagenet’s empire – I’m talking here about huge chunks of France - Henry had lost instead.

Henry’s son, Edward I, also known as ‘Longshanks’, was however another cup of tea.  The Crusades were past their glory days [at least that’s how people saw it back then] but even before becoming king, young Edward Longshanks had made his mark in them.

As king, he made his mark at home as well, charging round Wales, planting castles with his left hand, defeating the guerilla tactics of those two famous Welsh princes, Llewelyn and his brother, Dafydd, with his right.

Llywelyn the Great, also known as Llywelyn the Last - according to many, even today, he was the last real, 100%, genuine Prince of Wales.  The night before he died in battle, story has it that he slept in a cave on the banks of the Wye. And it so happens that I've been to that cave. It does exist. I found it when I was doing research for  my novel The Red Judge. 

The cave wasn’t easy to locate. No signpost pointed the way.  All I found to guide me was a worn path across a field of wheat. When I got there, however, I found it exactly as I’d heard it described - a low cave in a cliff set back behind a stream, only to be  entered by stooping, its walls and ceiling covered with graffiti.  Some of that graffiti was modern, written in felt-tip. Some, though, was beautifully engraved and dated back centuries.  Sleep well, sweet prince, I read.   We’ll never forget you, someone else wrote, adding their name.  You’ll always be our prince wrote a third - and after that there was a fourth, a fifth and a hundredth more.

So why am I telling you this?  It’s because the story of those two doomed Princes of the Welsh has the last page of its final chapter written here in Shrewsbury. Every day I walk past its final full stop.  Every night, when I go to Waitrose at the top of Pride Hill, I skirt around it, rarely thinking about what once took place.

I’m talking about our High Town Cross.  In case you don’t know the story of what once happened there, here it is. Objecting to Edward I’s heavy-handed replacement of Welsh customs and laws with English ones, which they saw as an attempt to crush the Welsh spirit, Llewelyn and his brother went to war  [I’m doing a lot of condensing here].  No offering of English earldoms could deter them.  They and their Welsh compatriots fought bravely and achieved some notable victories, but in the cold depths of a Welsh winter, Llewelyn was slaughtered in battle near Builth Wells.

The Welsh fought on under Dafydd. However, in April 1283 their final stronghold, the magical Castell y Bere, ten miles west of Dollgellau, was captured. In June of that year Dafydd was betrayed and captured too. He was brought to Shrewsbury and in that year’s Michaelmas parliament stood trial.

Dafydd was a leader of his people, and a royal one to boot. As far as Edward I was concerned, however, Dafydd was a turncoat who in his youth had enjoyed Edward’s hospitality and all the comforts of his court. This war, therefore, wasn’t just political. It was personal.  ‘Namely, in the time of the Lord’s passion, when Judas betrayed Our Lord,’ Edward wrote to the king of Castile, ‘so our traitors, Llewelin ap Griffith and David his brother, who was our familiar and counselor, traitorously rose against us with all their Welsh, invading the lands of our march, killing our lieges, burning villages and towns.’

Edward’s revenge was to have Dafydd slaughtered as a common criminal.  At the top of Pride Hill, seven hundred and twenty years ago, arguably Wales’s last true prince was hung, drawn and quartered.  For those of you who don’t know the details, this involved being hung on a scaffold, having one’s body slashed with a butcher’s blade and one’s intestines ripped out without the nicety of waiting for one to be dead, those intestines being burned and what was left of one's body being hacked into quarters, and in Dafydd’s case each of those quarters being sent to a different city as a reminder of the king’s power.  Finally Dafydd’s head was sent to the Tower of London, where it was set on a spike next to Llewelyn’s head. 

All that Shropshire historians, Blakeway and Owen, have to add to this sorry tale is that on Llewelyn’s body, when he died in battle, along with his signet was found a paper in ‘dark expressions and feigned names, from which it appears that certain noblemen near the Welsh, either Marchians or other, are disaffected to our lord the king.’  Poor old them. Llewelyn’s head was wreathed with ivy, ‘in derision of those claims on the crown to which he was encouraged by the bards’. But no such frills for them. All those men on the list were executed. A massacre, Owen and Blakeway call it. But at least that bit of the story didn’t happen in Shrewsbury.

PS. The head of Llewelyn is apparently reckoned to be buried beneath a pub on a Cardiff council estate.  The final resting place of the rest of his body has remained a mystery ever since. I haven't been able to find out anything about Dafydd's head.

  

Doreen Woodford, Signal and the Shropshire Deaf Community

Down through the Square, past the stalls of the farmers’ market and round the back of Shrewsbury’s soon-to-be new museum and art gallery, last Friday found me in hot pursuit of a woman called Doreen Woodford. She may not be well known to you or me, but worldwide she’s renown for her work in the deaf community. Or at least she was.  Doreen has been dead now for a couple of years, so I suppose for accuracy’s sake I should say it was her legacy I was in pursuit of, not the woman herself.

The Woodford Foundation has its head office on College Hill.  It’s one of a surprisingly large number of charities based in Shrewsbury. Our town might be tucked away in the rolling border country between England and Wales, but it’s anything but inward looking.  The Woodford Foundation, for example, has for years been working with partners across the world, including in Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania, where over the years Doreen had built up direct contacts and strong links.

There's been support for the deaf here in Shrewsbury for well over a century. The Church Mission to the Deaf and Dumb in South Staffordshire and Shropshire was founded in 1856, establishing two small centres in Shropshire as well as working in Wolverhampton. In 1955, that organisation purchased Brierley House in Shrewsbury as a centre for deaf social and church activities. Then in 1963, a local committee -The Shropshire Christian Association With Deaf People (SCAD) - was established to oversee the delivery of services in Shropshire.

In 1993 South Staffs and Shropshire separated, SCAD became an independent charity and the Shropshire Deaf Association took over Brierley House, which it held until 2002.   In 2004, the Woodford Foundation was set up by four retired professionals, including Doreen Woodford, who had worked throughout their careers with sensory-impaired children and their families, in particular overseas. Since then the two organizations continued to operate in tandem until their merger last week.

Interestingly, Doreen never wanted an organization named after her. That was thrust upon her by the Foundation’s other Trustees, in recognition of what her name stood for in the deaf community worldwide.  We’re talking here about a woman whose exploits included sneaking into Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule, disguised beneath a burka, to bring support to that country’s deaf community; flying fearlessly into the Congo; even taking on Somalia, coercing men with machine guns to allow her to pass through. 

Since last week, however, the name ‘Woodford’ is no longer being used – and my guess is that Doreen would be delighted. A merger has taken place. The Shropshire Deaf Association and the Woodford Foundation have become Signal. Their Chief Executive is Matthew Gilbert, and last Friday I met him along with Rachel Baxter, who’s been in charge of the merger, and James Cousins who until now, working for Shropshire Deaf, has been responsible for building up local relationships. Their offices, overlooking a lovely walled garden [one of those hidden gems that Shrewsbury specializes in], are packed with files, paperwork, bookshelves and computers.  These are busy people. I appreciated them making time for me.

Mat talked about the stigma of deafness, which he said was a massive problem.  Across Africa, courtesy of a wealth of superstitions, the deaf face serious social taboos.  Deafness can be extremely isolating.  Africans often regard the deaf as cursed. Even within the family, the deaf can find themselves excluded.  And where the deaf community forms itself into groups, those groups are still often separate from the rest of society.

The same can be said of the UK too.  ‘Maybe people don’t see deafness as a matter of being cursed,’ Mat said, ‘but our society isn’t much better at helping the deaf to find their place.’  

Helping the deaf to find that place is what Signal is all about. Its global mission is to integrate deaf people into their families, their communities and their society.  It offers local-to-local assistance both in Africa and here in the UK. ‘This is the slow way of going about things,’ Mat said.  ‘A massive amount of time is spent listening to people, and talking through issues. It would be far quicker to go in saying we know what you need, but then we wouldn’t be half so effective.’

In Tanzania, the Woodford Foundation has done a great deal of work assisting deaf children in their out-of-school lives, which is often when they have nowhere else to go. They’ve worked with parents too, and their first vocational training centre for the deaf was opened in 2010, run by nationally qualified and accredited staff.  Woodford was proud to be involved in that scheme, helping to provide appropriate teaching that was funded by the Tanzanian government. 

In Malawi, the Woodford Foundation recognized that very little aid and support was going to the north of the country.  Sure enough, up there they found a need that wasn’t being addressed. For the last four years, along with the Central African Presbytarian church [who run three quarters of the schools in northern Malawi], they’ve been running awareness communication training and encouraging families to put their deaf children into schools.

The Woodford Foundation, and now Signal, very much see their role as one of project management.  They don’t have staff on the ground working in their name, but work instead with overseas partners.  ‘It’s important to build capacity locally,’ Mat said, ‘so that local people can undertake the training themselves. If we go out, it’s only as observers.  We’re the catalyst, you could say, bringing together money and help, and formulating plans and programmes to be implemented by trained and trusted outreach workers and volunteers from the deaf community.’

Currently Signal has been asked by Comic Relief to create a model that can be replicated elsewhere. This speaks for the success their approach is seen to be achieving.  In order to build that model they have starting up pilot schemes in Malawi and Uganda. ‘In Malawi,’ Mat said, ‘we’re seeing more and more government involvement, but often very little by way of funds.  The Ministry are keen to buy into projects, but often they don’t have the money or resources.  The Millenium Development goals call for the highest number of children possible to be in schools and trained.  But higher numbers of pupils in classes mean that the quality of teaching is reduced and inevitably the hearing impaired miss out. 

‘In a situation like this,’ said Mat, ‘we’ll work with teachers to look at learning methods that improve deaf children’s chances.  Placing them at the front of class, for example, or making sure that teachers talk whilst facing children rather than with their back to them, whilst writing on the board – these simple things don’t cost anything to implement, but they make a great difference.’

Much work is being done in the UK too. Many deaf people end up being completely dependent because not enough thought has gone into what will happen to them post-education.  Making links into the vocational world is of vital importance, as is the need to raise awareness that the deaf can be as productive as anybody else.

This is where James’s work comes into its own.  He’s been busy liaising with hard-of-hearing groups, social workers, councils and other gatekeepers, working towards creating a deaf and hard-of-hearing hub.  Sometimes he’ll sit in on audiology clinics,  other times he'll drop in on the See/Hear van on its regular visits around Shropshire’s care homes, bringing advice to the hard of hearing, including practical help with hearing aids.

James also sets up focus groups. ‘But the deaf are nervous of groups,’ he said. ‘That’s when they notice their impairment most.’  Even so, a number of groups are operating in the region, and James is working with clinical commissioning groups to find a place in Shrewsbury where they can meet - somewhere hopefully that could offer access to a variety of users. ‘Did you know,’ James said, ‘that 43% of people who go to their GP about hearing problems don’t get referred on?’ I didn’t, and I was shocked.  That’s a very high percentage.  

I wanted to know more about the merger between Woodford and Shropshire Deaf.  Rachel’s been working on this since July, concentrating on merging, rebranding and last week’s big launch.  The origin of this merger, she said, came a few years ago when the Shropshire Deaf Association decided it wanted to do more.  That’s when it employed James, and the two organizations have been working side by side ever since.  ‘It was natural for their resources to be pooled,’ Rachel said. ‘Both organizations’ objectives were virtually identical. The only difference was that one  worked in Africa, the other in the UK.’

Both organizations were dealing with the same issues, raising awareness and working against stigma and isolation.  Everybody agreed they were a ‘good fit’.  It was healthy for a Shropshire-based organization to have an international dimension, and for an international organization to have a base back in the UK, working as part of a localized community, gave it a rootedness it wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Whether her name has gone or not, Doreen Woodford won’t be forgotten.  If you want to read the fascinating interview Mat conducted with her in September 2010, I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want to know more about Signal, here's their website, and here's the Shropshire Star article about their launch.  Or, if you want, you can still see the old Woodford Foundation website and read some of their back newsletters.

Oh, and one final word.  I’ve been using this phrase ‘the deaf community’, however, according to Mat, it’s not just one community but a series of them, all under the one banner.  There are the sign language users [‘the noisiest language in the world’ somebody once said, and having witnessed a group of deaf teenagers exuberantly signing on a train, I know what they meant].  There are those who lip read – and historically speaking Shropshire has always been a lip-reading county.  There are those who use hearing aids, whose deafness most probably is the result of a loss of hearing at some point in their lives. And there those of us who struggle with the effects of tinatus. 

As I write this, I can hear a swishing noise in my ears.  First time I realized this was happening, I was in a hammock, in a Welsh wood, beside the sea.  It was the middle of the night. Half way through telling myself how much I was enjoying the silence, I realized a] that it wasn’t silent – I could hear the sea – and b] it wasn’t the sea; it was me.   Since then the swishing has upped the ante. Now I hear a giddying roar of static every time a bus goes by.  Sometime I’ll have to go to the doctor.  Hopefully I won’t be one of James’s 43%.  I only tell you this, not to garner sympathy, but to make the point that deafness isn’t ‘out there’ happening to ‘someone else’.  It can happen to any of us.

Eric Loveland Heath

I’m having coffee with Eric Loveland Heath who’s the face in the adverts for weaver Helen Foot’s scarfs [see right, photo by Ella Ruth Cowperthwaite]. Much more than that, however, Eric is a talented and highly original musician. This isn’t the first time we’ve met, but it’s the first time we’ve sat down and talked. Eric is shiny, sharp and button-bright. He enjoys the bizarre and has an original take on things. He’s intense about ideas and his mind works super-fast, jumping from one subject to another, grasping connections out of the air, a bit like a conjuror only his medium is words, not rabbits and hats.

Eric is fascinated by wordplay. ‘I’m not much good at conversation,’ he says, ‘but I’m good at words.’  Welsh in particular is a language he loves.  We talk about the Mabinogion, which Eric plucks out of his bag. I have a yarn which I tell him about the journeying down the centuries of the Red Book of Hergest [which contains the manuscript of the Mabinogion].  I call it 'hengist', not 'hergist' and Eric starts on about the word ‘hen’, which means ‘old’ in Welsh.  Before I have time to blink, he’s given me ‘hen’ in a dozen different contexts, then moved on seamlessly to his latest album, Tŷ, which is entirely written in Welsh.

Is Eric Welsh? His accent isn’t Welsh. Sure enough, his mum was born in Swansea, but Eric was born in the States. Athens, Georgia, he says [described by some - who don't know Shrewsbury - as the 'best town in the world']. An exotic-sounding birthplace, I think, for a man with such an exotic name. Eric says his full name, Eric Loveland Heath [for recording purposes he uses the shorter E.L. Heath], came to him from his grandfather, passed down through alternate generations in the family.  ‘I was bullied for it at school. I didn’t much enjoy school.  I never really made friends,’ Eric says.

Eric grew up in Snailbeach.  The village school was Stiperstones, the secondary school where he was bullied was Mary Webb, though Eric hears a lot has changed since then and the school’s a different place.

Eric lived in Snailbeach until he was sixteen. The number six, he points out, has featured large in his life. He left Athens aged six weeks, moved to London where he lived until he was six, moved to Shropshire and lived in Snailbeach until he was sixteen, and returned to Snailbeach aged twenty-six to produce an album loosely based around Snailbeach life.  It always rains in Snailbeach, Eric says.  I contest this claim.  Eric insists he’s right, and says he knows the place better than me – which he does.   ‘You’ll get pockets of cloud,’ he says. ‘Even after the sun has broken through everywhere else, Snailbeach can be swathed in mist. There’s an atmosphere about the place - weird and slightly sinister.’  

Eric has been writing and producing albums for years. His life in music started with messing around on the guitar, then he ‘did things’ on his laptop, joined a band, played bass and started writing words. Back in his schooldays it had been his sister who was seen as the musical one. Nowadays, however, Eric’s home is packed with instruments.  Synthesizers, keyboards, guitars – ‘You wouldn’t believe the things you can pick up on Freecycle,’ Eric says.

I still haven’t got to the bottom of Eric’s writing in Welsh. He explains that he joined a Welsh-speaking band called Strap the Button who all spoke Welsh fluently.  Thanks to them, Eric began to pick up the language. Then he developed what he knew on the Open University, and later he continued his studies in Welshpool and at Shrewsbury College of Art & Technology.

Plainly Eric is a man who pursues his interests in thorough-going fashion.  His experimentation with sound is another good example.  Years ago Eric heard on Gerry Anderson’s ‘Captain Scarlet’ a sound that fascinated him.  When he heard it again on the Ondes Martenot [no, I hadn’t heard of it either; it’s an instrument devised by the cellist Maurice Martenot] he immediately wanted to make that sound himself.   ‘I knew I’d found what I was looking for,’ Eric says.  ‘Playing it became a bit of an obsession.  It’s always been the technical side of music that’s fascinated me, the creation of sounds and the effect they have, the techniques that go into making things sound weird.’

With Strap the Button, Eric made it onto Radio One, a gig that led to the band having a chance to record. After that, Eric went off on his own, making his own music and ‘messing around with machines’, which is how he puts it.  He also hooked up with another band, epic45.  ‘It’s they who’ve been the biggest musical influence in my life,’ says Eric. ‘Ben Holton and Rob Glover. I met them years ago through friends, put on a gig for them at the Albert pub in Shrewsbury, and in return they asked me to play at their festival. After that, they went off to Japan and I didn’t see them for six months. Then Rob and I got together at the Hollybush Inn at Glasbury-on-Wye and Rob asked if I’d like to join the band. Since then I’ve been on three European tours with them, including Istanbul and Madrid.  Poland took some beating though.  We spent most of the time sleeping on camp beds, and often had issues getting paid. That was the worst. Usually it’s much better than that.’

Eric gives me a link to the official epic45 website. They’ve been making music now for more than a decade, inspired by their rural background, childhood summers in the countryside and their affinity with their surroundings. Amongst the radio shows they’ve played is the late John Peel’s. Back in July 2011 they were The Sunday Times’ album of the week.  NME describes them as ‘beguiling and beautiful’.

I’m listening to them now as I write, half an eye on their official video, entitled ‘The Future is Blinding’.  ‘What is there to life?’ they ask. ‘Is collecting, objects, memories, what life’s about?’

Eric starts talking about standing on stage and making moody music. His influences include the psychedelic music of Kevin Ayres and the classical electronics [‘spacey noises’, Eric calls them] of Joe Meek. He and the rest of the band are currently concentrating on releasing albums in their own names, but the hub of all their activities, as much as ever, is still the band.

Eric calls epic45 the ‘mothership’.  He has his own label, Plenty Wenlock Records, a small outfit comprised of short runs of hand-made releases that are also made available to download. Wayside & Woodland though is his main focus and the label through which his latest album, ‘Tŷ’, will be released.

According to Eric, Wayside & Woodland is a label run by epic45 and friends. On 14^th October, his single 'Yr Sioe Afanc' ['The Afanc Show'] will be released on their Bandcamp page [http://waysideandwoodlandrecordings.bandcamp.com/] along with a music video.  I go onto the Wayside & Woodland website, and this is what comes up about Eric:

‘Eric’s songs often combine intertwining acoustic guitars, accordion, flute and voice to evoke anything from the playful pastoral melodies of Freddie Phillips to the rich psychedelic pop of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. Many of these songs have their roots in Eric’s love for the area around his home on the English/Welsh border – a glorious melting pot of language, local history and myths, fanatical friends obsessed with motorik rhythms, and mysteriously-named Welsh language 7″ singles stumbled across in village car boot sales. Somehow, with a dash of Joe Meek and the Radiophonic Workshop’s 60s experimentalism, a hint of Ivor Cutler’s surreal whimsy and a nod towards the uncompromising artists releasing records on the fiercely Welsh label Ankst, from the depths of the Shropshire hill country E.L. Heath manages to make it all fit together.’

So there you have it.  So far in his solo career, Eric has brought out four EPs, one online album, and four CDs, including the forthcoming ‘Tŷ’. ‘It’s knowing that I have a CD coming out that inspires me to write,’ Eric says.  ‘And with this one it was that sense of reaching out beyond my own county and the places that I knew that inspired me.’ Eric loves diversity, other countries, looking over the hill and finding out what lies beyond.   In his new CD he’s reaching out beyond Shropshire into Wales. ‘I really enjoy writing and putting things together,’ he says, ‘but I have to admit I don’t particularly enjoy much of the actual recording process.  It’s the ideas that excite me, drawing on my well of interests, watching ideas come together and turn into something.’

As well as collecting instruments, Eric also collects vinyl and books. He’s an avid reader who goes for the bizarre and downright weird. He cites the absurd tales of Ivor Cutler as a good example.  And the Mabinogion. ‘Dragons, fairies, kings and queens - they’re all there,’ Eric says.

Algernon Blackwood is another author Eric mentions. An English writer of ghost stories and supernatural fiction, he was described by H.P. Lovecraft as ‘the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere.’ ‘The Willows’ is one of his best known stories.  Eric also loves the bizarre writing of Scottish satirist, radio producer and television director/writer, Armando Iannucci. ‘All that stuff he wrote for radio before In The Thick Of It came along – it was brilliant,’ Eric says.

Eric and I are sitting in the Shrewsbury Coffeehouse.  He lives several miles out of town but comes in frequently.  A year or so ago, the photographer Richard Foot and his sister, the weaver Helen Foot, put together a series of network evenings, bringing together Shrewsbury artists, writers, film-makers and craftspeople.  Eric already knew Richard from before, so he came along.  Networking, he says, has made him less insular.  Things are happening in Shrewsbury these days, and he’s glad to be a part of them.

Eric’s album is due out on October 28^th. The Pre-order link is already up. My order's going in after I've finished writing this post.  Here's the link in case you want to order it too: http://waysideandwoodland.limitedrun.com/products/519278-e-l-heath-ty-pre-order