'Face to Face with' ~ Geraint Ellis
Taken from and reproduced by kind permission of ‘Hunan-bortread’ October 2009 issue.
The Creative Urge:
You arrive on time. A few minutes early even. You’d been told he’d like that. And he does. He’s so ready to meet you he gives the impression he was waiting at the door all night, hand on the handle. That’s another thing you’d been told: He’s only happy when his hand’s on the handle.
He greets you warmly. Someone shouts hi from the kitchen. It’s his Mark-one wife he quips. The Welsh Cakes are just out of the oven. The apartment is big. Victorian: High ceilings, modern interior, minimalist. You comment on the unique hall furniture. It’s something he has in common with Phillip Pulman he says – working with wood, trying to satisfy the creative urge in different ways perhaps …
On the way through to the lounge with its massive Victorian bay windows, wide balcony only yards away from the promenade and the Irish Sea, he adds that while building his last home in Harlech (a spectacular elevated plot overlooking the Plantagenet Castle) he’d often greet Miss Enid Jones (Pulman’s teacher) and explain the plan or show something new.
Did he talk books to her, you ask. No, not at all he replies, though later, when he was some way through ‘Reaching Out ~ Reaching In’ he told her about it and he remembers she particularly liked the sub-title he had in mind at the time –
‘Six Characters in search of Themselves’ – a title he didn’t use of course. But she made the Pirandello connection straight away.
So he wrote most of this book while living in Harlech? Yes. Yes he did. The ‘Round-window view of Snowdon’ (mentioned in the book) is fact, not fiction. One minute he was helping workmen move building blocks, the next he’d jot an idea down, or write a list of building requirements for the next day. And when he was finally finished – the house that is, he devoted all his time to the book.
But he likes the name he gave the Harlech house – ‘Dros Y Castell’ – Over the Castle, because in Welsh the complete address reads, ‘Over Harlech Castle’. The Welsh language can be subtle he adds – like the car registration he saw recently DI ENW, which in Welsh reads, ‘Without Name’, or ‘Anonymous’. Now how subtle is that?
(Ohmygad! Now that is really cool. This is what you want to talk about: Cars! This is why you parked your 1990 red Mk 1 VW Golf Clipper Convertible under his balcony. But the only VW you’re allowed to talk about is Virginia Wolf …)
Ok; so did he regret leaving the landscape and the rich historical heritage of Harlech behind him and saying ‘goodbye to all that’ in order to down-size to his present Victorian apartment further up the coast?
No. No, not really. Though like many who lived in Harlech – from Owain Glyndwr, who after taking the castle in 1404, established the first Parliament of Wales in the house that once occupied the adjoining garden of ‘Dros y Castell’, to Robert Graves (who had lived only yards away), he’d found it an inspiring place to be.