while I leap on, hold him steady, hold him sure, till I win o’er the misty moor . She called it that because the Rivals were usually covered in cloud, even on the hottest days, though on this day the sky was clear but for the odd tugged wisp smoothed over the tops. The island of Anglesey was visible to the north, Cardigan Bay and the mountains of Mid-Wales to the south, and the Wicklow Mountains, across the sea in Ireland, stretched out like a knotted string on the western horizon. Behind us, to the east, the cantilever of Yr Eifl’s peaks gated off Snowdonia. Ahead, the road spooled towards the volcanic cone of Garn Fadryn. Somewhere on Garn Fadryn’s flank, very small, not yet visible, was our cottage. The Llŷn Peninsula floated before us, towing its islands with it, the sea and the sky continuous, indistinguishable one from another.
We pulled up outside the cottage, one of four houses on a crossroads. Tony, who lived in the house opposite to ours, waved from the armchair in his glass porch. He spent most of his days, and nights, in this armchair, a tank of oxygen at his side. I was about to speak to him when Evie clambered over the rendered wall on her way to our front door.
‘Be careful!’ The wall had a crack in it from top to bottom and had split into free-standing halves. The pieces gave perceptibly whenever anyone vaulted it. According to Tony it had been like that since the summer of 1984 when, thirteen miles beneath the mountain, the European Plate had eased its position relative to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The subsequent earthquake had measured 5.4 on the Richter Scale and remains the most significant seismic movement on record in the British Isles. It had rattled teacups and crumpled chimneys as far away as Liverpool. There was some debate about whether or not ours was one of them. When I first bought the cottage, which is a traditional two-room bothy, the inglenook fireplace was concreted in. I asked a local builder to try to reveal it and Tony had come over in his vest and slippers to watch the work and have a beer. There was no foundation to the house, only mud beneath black tiles. A few inches below the surface an underground stream ran out from the centre of the fireplace and on through the only bedroom. The stream was visible, outside, at either end of the cottage, where it ran clear beneath rusted grilles. The newly revealed inglenook and chimneybreast dominated the room.
‘You want to watch that,’ Tony had said. ‘It started shifting after that last rumble. That’s how come it was rendered in.’ Tony leaned against the mantel and gently scratched his belly with the hand that wasn’t holding the bottle. Geraint, the labourer, looked up from the hole that he had dug in the floor. It was filling up with water from the stream, which no longer ran clear. His spade hit something hard. Emlyn, the builder, climbed down into the hole and the two men eased up a pillow of granite from the centre of the fireplace. It belched free of the mud, they curled their arms beneath it, staggered with it, lurched and slipped towards the door, as though carrying a newborn calf. There was an uneasy moment.
‘That’s the foundation stone,’ offered Tony.
‘What?’ asked Emlyn.
‘It’ll fall down now, for sure.’ Tony shifted his footing to get a better look in the hole.
‘You want to mind you don’t fall in,’ Emlyn said. ‘My insurance won’t cover it if you do because you’re not supposed to be here.’
‘Well, I’ll come back when you’ve put the floor in. Thank you for the beer, flower, Diolch yn faw r !’ and with that Tony shuffled out.
The men persevered. Over the next few days they dug a footing, more than two hundred years after the house was raised on the turf from random rubble , which is a technical term in the building trade meaning anything that comes to hand . They accommodated the stream within a layer of gravel, and a membrane, and covered it all in concrete. They built a
We pulled up outside the cottage, one of four houses on a crossroads. Tony, who lived in the house opposite to ours, waved from the armchair in his glass porch. He spent most of his days, and nights, in this armchair, a tank of oxygen at his side. I was about to speak to him when Evie clambered over the rendered wall on her way to our front door.
‘Be careful!’ The wall had a crack in it from top to bottom and had split into free-standing halves. The pieces gave perceptibly whenever anyone vaulted it. According to Tony it had been like that since the summer of 1984 when, thirteen miles beneath the mountain, the European Plate had eased its position relative to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The subsequent earthquake had measured 5.4 on the Richter Scale and remains the most significant seismic movement on record in the British Isles. It had rattled teacups and crumpled chimneys as far away as Liverpool. There was some debate about whether or not ours was one of them. When I first bought the cottage, which is a traditional two-room bothy, the inglenook fireplace was concreted in. I asked a local builder to try to reveal it and Tony had come over in his vest and slippers to watch the work and have a beer. There was no foundation to the house, only mud beneath black tiles. A few inches below the surface an underground stream ran out from the centre of the fireplace and on through the only bedroom. The stream was visible, outside, at either end of the cottage, where it ran clear beneath rusted grilles. The newly revealed inglenook and chimneybreast dominated the room.
‘You want to watch that,’ Tony had said. ‘It started shifting after that last rumble. That’s how come it was rendered in.’ Tony leaned against the mantel and gently scratched his belly with the hand that wasn’t holding the bottle. Geraint, the labourer, looked up from the hole that he had dug in the floor. It was filling up with water from the stream, which no longer ran clear. His spade hit something hard. Emlyn, the builder, climbed down into the hole and the two men eased up a pillow of granite from the centre of the fireplace. It belched free of the mud, they curled their arms beneath it, staggered with it, lurched and slipped towards the door, as though carrying a newborn calf. There was an uneasy moment.
‘That’s the foundation stone,’ offered Tony.
‘What?’ asked Emlyn.
‘It’ll fall down now, for sure.’ Tony shifted his footing to get a better look in the hole.
‘You want to mind you don’t fall in,’ Emlyn said. ‘My insurance won’t cover it if you do because you’re not supposed to be here.’
‘Well, I’ll come back when you’ve put the floor in. Thank you for the beer, flower, Diolch yn faw r !’ and with that Tony shuffled out.
The men persevered. Over the next few days they dug a footing, more than two hundred years after the house was raised on the turf from random rubble , which is a technical term in the building trade meaning anything that comes to hand . They accommodated the stream within a layer of gravel, and a membrane, and covered it all in concrete. They built a
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