Saturday, November 13, 2010

"We were lost, but we knew where we were"





To get to Portmeirion I caught the Ffestiniog Railway across The Cob and got off at Minfford, the first station up the line.

On the way I chatted to a retired man. He said that he could join the railway society for a few pounds a year. This meant that if the fancy took him after he had come into Porthmadog for a coffee, he could take the train to Blaenau Ffestiniog and back for no extra fare.

He had grown up in Porthmadog and he and his friends used to play in the extensive woods around Portmeirion as a boy. "We got lost. Well, we were lost, but we knew where we were."

There is something profound about the nature of play in there somewhere.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

There is. Thank you for sharing.

complicatedgwyn said...

You do realise that Portmeirion has three different spellings in that piece?

Which reminds me of the occasion when our local free newspaper managed three different spellings of my name in one story - all of which were incorrect!

Jonathan Calder said...

I think I have got it down to one now.

I blame Clough Williams-Ellis.