The local church has roped me in to do a reading for Dydd Gwyl Dewi. Slightly taken aback by this as usually, unless they want a job doing, I’m viewed as a Marxist/atheist/republican/blahblahblah however …
This is in Cheshire and they want me to start in Welsh and do an “amusing” shift to English. There’s no problem there, and I’ve sworn to Mrs Shak that I will be a good lad :-). I need to be able to say something along the lines of ‘When he fasted he drank only honey and ate leeks’ (probably had few mates )
I can’t find the verb “to fast” . Has anyone any ideas please?
The deal (from my end) is that everyone will have to say Dydd gwyl Dewi hapus before they get to the cake and coffee.
Job done, thanks to your help, I managed to get around 50 people to say Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus to each other. The service was in the local school hall and was covered in Welsh ‘stwff’ , mostly tea towels and the odd love spoon. They did fly the Ddraig Goch from the flagpole which is a big improvement on last year’s St George’s cross effort.
I harangued them in Welsh for a while about being thankful for natural things and then asked them (in Welsh) why the leek and daffodil are national symbols. I thought I might out a Welsh speaker or two but no luck. After pulling their legs (again in Welsh) about not understanding, I let them off the hook, did the English bit as instructed and then got everyone to try out a bit of Welsh. I have had worse gigs and everyone joined in.
Lots of people had a word after and were keen to know how and why I learned. Two people asked me which bit of North Wales (the bit in Hunslet, originally) I came from but they both had squeaky hearing aids so let’s not get carried away.
It was well worth doing and people really did throw themselves into it. As we’re not far from the border, let’s hope everyone tries a bit of Welsh next time they slope off to “Abba-sock”
Quite superb. We really must try and sort out a video diary of your various and wonderful acts of evangelism - I’m amazed the S4C haven’t given you your own show yet…!
Almost certainly. As Mrs Shak’s the chair of governors and to be fair, I do feel I should support the school and the language (but NOT the church, necessarily) the emotional blackmail’s sort of off the scale. I’m just relieved that no-one thought I was a bloke from the Albanian car wash down the road
)
