Nearly driving into the sea

South Stack, North Wales

About ten years ago, I got lost try­ing to get to my cousins’ farm­house in North Wales and nearly drove all the way into the sea.

‘It’s called Fferam Bai­ley, Benny, you can’t miss it’, said my uncle who was try­ing to give me direc­tions as I drove north­west from Lon­don. Por­ing through the excel­lent Ord­nance Sur­vey (OS) maps, (which I think are the bestest maps in the world, bar none) I grum­bled at the Malaysian-ness of my uncle’s instruc­tions — my Malaysian rel­a­tives always did that — give incom­plete dri­ving instruc­tions like, ‘ah, you com­ing up to visit? so remem­ber to turn off the high­way then go down the main road and then turn up the side road ah?‘

There are never stan­dard direc­tions like north or south or even left or right. Just off and down and up. And that makes it very dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate because down and up are depen­dent on how that rel­a­tive is visu­al­is­ing and ori­ent­ing his men­tal map. If his or her brain is hold­ing their maps upside down or even side­ways, you’re basi­cally a goner. Lost for good.

Tech­no­rati Tags: angle­sey, wales, ynys mon cymru

But all I knew was that my uncle lived some­where in Wales, and he did men­tion that North Wales was more beau­ti­ful than the south, where the cap­i­tal Cardiff was located. So I drove myself and my then girl­friend all the way up, stop­ping in Oxford for lunch, then get­ting lost try­ing to get back on the high­way, then mak­ing our way across the bor­der from Eng­land into Wales, and I knew we were deep in North Wales when we stopped to refuel, and the other peo­ple at the petrol sta­tion were speak­ing the strangest lan­guage I had ever heard. I know it would be rude to describe it as a mix of hack­ing, gur­gling and clear­ing of throats, so I won’t.

After dri­ving for more than six hours, my uncle got wor­ried and called, telling me that his farm­house was on an island, but no worry, there was a bridge across from the mainland.

I man­aged to make my way across the Menai Strait, and was happy enough know­ing that I was on Angle­sey, and all I had to do was find this place called Tre­f­draeth, not Mall­traeth or Glantraeth, and near this vil­lage called Llangefni. Of course I got lost and drove all the way up to Holy­head instead, call­ing my uncle from a pub­lic phone (you have to remem­ber that in those dark days a decade ago, mobile phone cov­er­age was quite lim­ited, and in remote North Wales, even more lim­ited), and telling him that I was see­ing signs telling me I could drive all the way to a ferry to take me to Ire­land, and that that meant I was def­i­nitely lost, and that he had to give me more def­i­nite directions.

Of course, all I had to do was to really look at my OS map, and find that Fferam Bai­ley — the struc­ture — was indi­cated on the very detailed map of North Wales and Angle­sey. And even though it was get­ting dark and we saw an ambu­lance by the side of the B-road with the ambu­lance dri­ver con­sult­ing a sim­i­lar OS map, I wasn’t too wor­ried because my uncle also said, ‘don’t worry, you’ll recog­nise it as the only Chi­nese farm house you’ll find in North Wales, because it’s the only one whose dri­ve­way is lit’.

We did get there even­tu­ally, to this pretty farm­house built in the 18th cen­tury, to be put up in a cot­tage named Pineap­ple Cot­tage next to the main house, and eat an equally incon­gru­ent din­ner of Can­tonese roast duck and rice which I had brought up from London’s Queensway.

I think we stayed there for three days or so, in the cot­tage with my grand­mother who was also vaca­tion­ing there at my Malaysian uncle’s 18th cen­tury Welsh farm­house, and I remem­ber wak­ing up really early (and got spooked by a cow in the dark) and watch­ing the sun rise, walk­ing through the field in front of the main house, pick­ing up a cou­pla pieces of what I sus­pected to be ancient Celtic metal thin­gies, which my uncle dis­missed as ‘com­mon’, so I threw them back.

One morn­ing, my Welsh aunt caught me in the field watch­ing the sun­rise, and asked me squarely what I was doing read­ing law and accoun­tancy at uni­ver­sity when it was clear I was never cut out for either. She also said I had to find out what it was that I wanted to do. In life. And all that.

I think I’m just about get­ting there.