I suppose if you hang out on the boarder ‘cusp’ of South Wales for too long, you ultimately get a date with a Valley Boy. Fate lending her pretty hand sometime last week, whist queuing at the Abergavenny Halifax cash-point, a conversation was struck…

Men; myself, now forty-five - I’ve done a few in my quest to find one I’ve wanted to hang about.  Crass as it sounds, thirteen months of marriage sometime around the early nineteen nineties taught me a lot; certainly, it taught me 'no one man can teach you everything.'  Anyway, whatever, so this quite sexy dark haired, blue eyed, fortyish ‘well Welsh Lad from Tredegar’ ordained I bring Fable, wear wellies, warm clothes and meet him outside the Hen & Chicks at 10.30 this morning. 

So long story shortened; a misty, frosty bloody cold February day - was spent on the back of a quad crisscrossing through the quarries and hills of the Duke of Beaufort’s land somewhere between Tredegar and Merthyr Tydfil. It was cold, exhilarating, we discussed drugs, alcohol, prison, coursing, lamping, dogs, bikes, horses, school and shop-lifting and all as I tucked my cold hands under his warm Welsh thighs; it was fun, he made me laugh.

Alas, it was only when we stopped in one of the quarries ‘to hola loudly to the echo of our voices’ that he pointed at the badge on the sleeveless puffa thing  I’ve worn every day since November  - and quoted ‘Free Palestine-what’s Palestine?’

I admit I looked at him twice, actually possibly three times just to quantify if he really meant what he’d just said. For me, it was a moment of unfathomable query; his was an honest question, he really had no bloody idea what Palestine is, let alone where it might be or what might be happening there? Certainly, in that moment that quarry seemed very very big.

It is as it is, he dropped me off about an hour ago; I told him, if he can answer twenty questions on Israel, Palestine and Hamas next time I see him, and take all the stuff in the garden that needs to go to the tip in the back of his truck; I might shag him. 

While the story of my past is the one I'm going to save till last, for this first page and original post on what is this new blog, it seems only apt to set the scene that is 'at her desk' and my life right now. While I could tell you that there is something deeply effecting about living in what is the Valley of the Black Mountains... The real truth is that I'm skint and while I could probably just about afford a well-worn car, I can't afford the insurance or the promised prison sentence if I get caught driving without it for a fourth time. Thus for now - 'KosieT the country girl' is playing with the convenience of 'provincial urbanism' in the so deemed 'Gateway to Wales' that is Abergavenny.  Its not like I'm a stranger to urban life, I've lived in London, Paris, New York, LA, and Madrid - yet still, Abergavenny's not quite the same...

It all began in a Sue Ryder shop, a conversation was struck with a buxom welsh  lass concerning 'a suitable shade of green'. It is as it was, it was one of those kinda of fateful meetings that maybe we don't necessarily recognise at the time, but in retrospect can see how one chance encounter can change the course of personal history.  Myself utterly unsettled at the time, living in a caravan while working my keep on a farm, I needed a swift change, but more than anything I needed a space I could work from.  So it is, the father of that beautiful buxom lass I encountered in Abergavenny's Sue Ryder shop, owns a building in 'central Aber.'

Built on the site of a Roman Fort, sitting in the shadow of what they call the Holy Mountain, this little market town is steeped in history - as is this little studio where I now sit 'at her desk.' I may work here now, but in a building that was built sometime in the fifteen hundreds it can be presumed many have worked here before me.  I adore this studio; its nothing, its just a room in some old building, in some old provincial welsh town, yet from the moment I walked into it I knew this sense of something bygone and rather Dickensian would be the perfect place to work.  So, it is as it is, for the last six months for the grand sum of £110 per month, this little room has become the womb of my creativity; situated on one of the cobble streets right in the middle of town, during the day there is loads of hustle n'bustle about, especially on market day's when they come hoarding down from the valley's by their coach loads.  Yet it is at night when I love this space the most, unlike any other city I've lived in, come 6.30pm the streets of Aber are completely empty, a ghost town, or 'transition town' with no one around...

Now late into the evening, the natural energies no longer dissipated by the crowd, myself probably the only person 'at her desk' for blocks around - and while I know I can only talk bricks and mortar as fact, however as a creative character, aware and acutely sensitive; I'd say there is something more in all of this, something rather magical, mystical and otherworldly that appears to only breath once the stillness dawns on this now dark quiet street.  

Burn me at the stake; but as an artist, I understand that in those rare glimpses of creative genius that I've experienced, the sense has always been that in these moments the feeling is of something coming through me, not from me.  It is only a sense, but then what are we if we are not our senses?

Anyway, for months I've been sitting here 'at her desk' pondering the consideration of all this essence of esoteric richness that appears to near tangibly fill this old place during the evening light... Really, it is extraordinary; hauntingly beautiful, if I allow my imagination its freedom - I can tell you, that as I sit here and write right now, I can see the veiled shadows and hear the muffled voices of some of the old character's from century's long before that once dwelled and worked - just like me, here in Nevill Street.

Thus, imagine my somewhat ironic delight when a couple of weeks ago my path crossed an errant local nobleman who informed me that Shakespeare himself spent a winter living in Nevill Street. Alas, I can't verify this, but now that more than a couple of people have said the same; I'd like to believe it.  Certainly it can be said that Buckingham's son-in-law in Henry Vlll is named Lord Abergavenny? Who knows, who cares, but in my mind I can't help wondering if I'm sat here 'at her desk' in the veiled company of one of the true greats?

Whatever, even if there is no free will; and all is simply meant, as Shakespeare wrote 'Thou art all thy art...'  I set myself a year, a year to tidy up, clean up, and initiate what is The Idee Fixe that sits on my desk; six months in, I fear I might need a little longer...