John S Alty

It is!

I wasn’t 100% certain that the (very) occasional references I found on the Net were to ‘my’ Susie until I found that photo. Susie isn’t exactly a rare name; neither is her given name, Susana, not in Spain. And though her surname may be exotic in Britain, she’d told me it’s common in Catalonia, where she was born.

On her last day at the pub I gave…[Read more]

Wow Richard, what a story. I really wasn’t expecting that ending. It’s funny when you meet people who just have this sort of energy about them, who you know in your bones are remarkable. Lovely bit of real life at a deep emotional level, beautifully told

I don’t want to come on like a rampant egotist, but within hours of my posting this latest blog Ath’s new challenge appeared, and all the excitement has pushed my blog out of sight way down the wall. So this blog is another thing that’s going to go…………..BUMP.

Thank you for taking us with you on that trip down Memory Lane. What a lovely story. Here’s to Susie.

That, of course, is because, while ”snwcr’ is one of the many words the Welsh have borrowed from English and re-spelt (rather entertainingly) phonetically in Welsh, ‘heddlu’ (hethly) is a real Welsh word. But the Welsh for policeman is ‘plismon’, and for policewoman – wait for it – ‘plismones’.

Well-written and informative blog, as always. Thank you.

I love seeing Welsh words and working out how they might be pronounced. I knew how to pronounce Abergele because my grandmother, father and aunt were evacuated there during the war, and Gran used to speak of it.

Many years ago, the law firm I worked at acted for a client buying a snooker…[Read more]