Under the Tump Read Free Page A

countryside, one in a town (of sorts).
    A steady flow of new arrivals has found its way here over the centuries. First came the Marcher lords, sent by William the Conqueror to quell the troublesome Welsh. Then the hill farmers and the drovers, the merchants and the landed gentry, the artists and the hippies. Folk ‘from off’, as the vernacular has it. If the area remains true to its past, we wouldn’t be the only new guys in the village.
    A few background enquiries reinforced our expectations. Although Hay’s name derives from haye , the Norman word for ‘enclosure’, it sounded like the kind of place that would be open to fresh faces. In the months before we moved, Emma’s hesitations about rural life were further alleviated by her close reading of Life in Hay, a well-informed blog by an idiosyncratic local bookseller. The site includes a profile picture of the author in historical re-enactment garb as well as links to websites such as Hay Feminists, Brilley Buddhist Retreat and Cosy under Canvas.
    Aside from the desirability of Hay and Clyro, Emma liked the house, which she thought quirky and brimming with potential. It once belonged to Adaš Dworski, a Croatian ceramicist of Polish descent, a memory kept alive in the first line of its address: Pottery Cottage. Some of the potter’s glazes still adorn the exterior wall; a twinkling star, a colourful jester, a crescent moon.
    The house sits beside the Hay road amid a cluster of mostly modern houses on the eastern fringe of the village. Immediately opposite is a heavily wooded hillock, home hundreds of years ago to a defensive fort. Locals, we’d later learn, refer to it as the ‘castle tump’, or simply, ‘the tump’. Today it’s overflowing with brambles and nettles and trees of all types; oak, ash, sycamore, yew, hazel, rowan, alder, beech, field maple. From the back garden of the cottage, itlooks as though a jungle is sprouting through the roof.
    Despite the work it would require, Emma’s mind was set. As part of the renovations, she reckoned we could make an office for me out of the garden shed. I was sold and we started packing.
    *
    Several months after we move, I receive an invitation to contribute to an evening discussion at The Globe in Hay. A former Congregational church on Newport Street, the venue is now reinvented as a popular spot for live music and cultural events.
    The topic for debate centres on the impact of digital communications technologies on rural communities. Are they welcome? Do we need more or less of them? On the platform with me is the local Welsh Assembly member, an academic in urban studies from Cardiff University and a film-maker for a media firm specialising in rural issues.
    We meet backstage in a temporary yurt, where a young assistant fusses over our clip-on microphones and briefs us on the format. As he speaks, we surreptitiously weigh one another up. I feel distinctly ill-equipped. Removing myself from my fellow panellists, I find a seat to the side and go through my notes. They are sketchy but I hope their underlying argument is sound.
    The main thrust links to the idea of belonging and place, two themes of abiding interest to me. The American novelist John Updike captures my thinking best. I’d been listening to the radio before leaving Argentina when a clip came on from an interview Updike had given in 1970. He was discussing the arrival of his second child and his subsequent decision toleave New York, the advantages of the Big Apple ‘counterbalanced’ by his new responsibilities. So the couple sold up and moved to Ipswich, a small coastal town in upstate Massachusetts.
    The scenario felt familiar to me. You leave college, go to the big city, get a job, live it up, fall in love, make a home, tell yourself, ‘This is it, this is us.’ Then kids arrive. Your job gets tougher. And slowly everything begins to change. The nights out become more infrequent, your friends begin to spread out, your world begins to shrink.