Senor Nice (4 page)

I pulled out the spliff from my top pocket, lit it and smoked it until nothing but ash remained. The crowd went wild. Leroy and the Pavilion’s own security looked around anxiously. I put a red fez on my head.

To rapturous applause, I sat down for the question-and-answer session, which always started with the same questions:

I was hoping this would be asked. Now American-style piss tests were becoming the bane of every pot smoker’s lifestyle. Convicts on parole, kids on probation, members of the armed
forces and even ordinary employees of certain corporations were being asked with increasing regularity to demonstrate that their urine contained no traces of drugs. The British government had considered plans for police to be given the power to randomly stop any car and insist the driver step outside and piss into a bottle. Pot heads throughout the world had been experimenting with all sorts of foodstuffs, chemicals and minerals in the hope of neutralising evidence of dope in their urine. None seemed to work but recently, while on parole, Gerry Wills, my former Californian marijuana smuggling partner, had successfully invented a contraption to beat the test. Gerry called it the Whizzinator and sold them for $500 each. For old times’ sake he had given me one for nothing. The Whizzinator is an extremely lifelike false rubber penis (in a range of colours and sizes) which contains a small plastic bag of drug-free urine. Straps hold it in position. The instructions suggest you find some people who don’t take drugs, and take the piss out of them. When asked to do a piss test, all the smoker has to do to produce a stream of clean urine is to pull it out and squeeze it.

I took out the Whizzinator and explained the principles to the guffawing audience.

‘Show us how. Demonstrate it,’ someone yelled.

Clumsily, I stuck the Whizzinator down my trousers, pulled it out through my fly, stuck it in an empty pint glass and squeezed. It worked perfectly, but I couldn’t stop the flow. Nor could I pull the fucking Whizzinator out of my trousers without taking my clothes off. There was no chance of my doing that in front of the home crowd, who were now roaring with uncontrollable laughter. Ian switched off the stage lighting and put on the walk-out CD, and Leroy took me back to the dressing room, my trousers drenched with pristine piss.

The dressing room had recovered but, as a result of my enormous guest list, was quickly filling up and well on the way back to its former emergency-ward status. Everyone except
Leroy (‘Mi neva touch di shit, mon’) and Martin Baker was smoking a joint. Polly had fully recovered from her whitey but not from the embarrassment.

‘According to the tarot cards, you are both going to make it really big time in show business,’ said Psychic Dave to the bemused Kelly Jones and Gruff Rhys.

‘That Whizzinator stunt is pathetically sexist,’ a female reporter from
Wales on Sunday
complained to Taff. ‘How on earth could that rubber cock possibly help women beat the piss test?’

‘Look, love,’ said Taff, a master of lateral thinking, ‘if your car was stopped by the Old Bill, you were asked to do a piss test and you pulled the Whizzinator out of your knickers, the cops would soon be on their bloody way. They’d fuck off, I can promise you that.’

Letters, cards and little presents were thrust into my hand. They included lighters, home-made Welsh cakes laced with hashish, home-brewed booze, several expertly crafted spliffs, a box of Sugar Puffs (the donor had seen the show in Liverpool the week before), a Welsh lady’s traditional top hat to be worn at future Welsh gigs instead of the fez, jars of honey and a bag labelled
Goddess Juice Grail Drop Mushrooms
. I quickly tore it open. Inside were about a hundred tiny Welsh psilocybin mushrooms – about two full doses. These would definitely come in handy. Governed by the operating hours of local public transport, many people began to leave, much to Ian’s relief, and soon there was just the hard core that had been there from the beginning.

‘I’m knackered, Ian. I think I’ll stay in the same hotel as you rather than go back to Kenfig Hill. Which one is it?’

‘The Seabank. It’s just up the road.’

‘Mi wi tan de, too, mon. Maybe mi wi fin mi family ya. Ow far Cardiff de?’ asked Leroy.

‘Only about twenty-five miles. I might go there myself; I don’t have a show for a few days.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, Howard,’ said Marty. ‘I’m busy in the morning.’

One by one they disappeared into the blustery night air. I took my bag of goodies to the Seabank and fell asleep listening to the crashing of the waves.

After a sleep full of dreams of ships and Welsh fezzes, I got up, had a full Welsh breakfast and took a cab back to Kenfig Hill. In the attic I rummaged through the bookshelves and cabin trunks and sifted through mounds of school exercise books, cuttings from magazines and yellowing documents that had once held some significance for a now-forgotten ancestor. I knew little about my family history and for the first time in my life wanted to learn more. I had better start soon before all my aunts and uncles passed away.

The oldest surviving member of my maternal family was my Grandpa Ben’s sister, Afon Wen, as precious as the roughest of diamonds. Much to her dismay, she now lived in an old people’s home set between Kenfig and Kenfig Hill, close to the M4 and adjacent to a sewage farm which she referred to as the perfume factory. By the strangest of coincidences,
Afon Wen
was also the name of the deep-sea salvage tug that during December 1979 landed fifteen tons of the finest Colombian marijuana on the western Scottish island of Kerrera. I was accused of masterminding the operation but after a nine-week trial was cleared of the charge by an Old Bailey jury, having persuaded them I was a spy. Although it was just a bizarre coincidence, I feel convinced that if Her Majesty’s Customs & Excise had been aware that the offending boat had the same, very unusual, name as my great-aunt, my acquittal would never have happened.

I walked into the home and found Aunt Afon Wen’s room.

‘Good God all bloody mighty! Howard
bach
! What the hell are you doing down here?’

‘Hello, Auntie ’Fon. I did a show last night at the Royal Pavilion in Porthcawl.’

‘Never! Well, I don’t know. No one lets me know bugger all these days now I’m stuck here with all these half-dead moaners and groaners. I’d have come along. Our Glyn would have given me a lift, I’m sure. Although I don’t know; I haven’t seen that bugger either for months. Come to think of it, why the hell didn’t you let me know yourself? I sent you a bloody Christmas card every year when you were in jail.’

‘I know. And yours was always the first I received. I’m sorry.’

‘Never mind. You’re here now. And looking all right too, except for that bloody hair of yours. I always used to tell your mam she should cut it in the middle of the night when you were sleeping. I’ll just make us a cup of tea. Help yourself to a fag. I think I’m going to have to give those up soon too. I’m coughing like a bloody hyena. But it’s hard to break an old habit, isn’t it? I’ve been smoking for over seventy years now.’

‘Well, I’m not the one you should ask for help. You know that.’ It was time to ask the question. ‘Auntie ’Fon, is there anyone famous in our family on Mam’s side?’

‘I don’t think so at all, unless we count you, of course. If they weren’t down the pits digging coal for the bloody English, they were writing poetry – a load of tommyrot most of it was, too.’

‘So none of them actually became famous?’

‘None except Dyfnallt Owen, who was a great-uncle of Nanna Jones, your mother’s mother. He became the bloody archdruid of Wales. A bit of a wizard, too, according to Nanna Jones.’

‘A wizard?’

‘Well, you know how people talk, Howard
bach
. How much to believe is another thing. But there were no end of stories from Nanna Jones about him boiling up magical potions and doing all sorts of tricks with them, tricks he had learnt from his
mother’s father, Dafydd Rhys Williams, a brother or first cousin of none other than Edward Williams, better known as Iolo Morgannwg.’

‘Well, he’s definitely famous, Auntie ’Fon. I’ve heard of him.’

‘I’m sure, but it’s pushing it a bit to say he’s part of the family, he’s a very distant relation if any at all. Mind, I’m not surprised you have heard of him. He was a bloody opium addict. Clever though, by all accounts. They say Iolo invented the eisteddfod. That’s how Dyfnallt Owen became its archdruid. It’s always been the same, hasn’t it, Howard
bach
? It’s who you know not what you know. There’s a book about Iolo on the shelves somewhere. Have a look when I get some milk for the tea.’

Iolo Morgannwg (Ned of Glamorgan), born 1747, was and is a glorious pain in the arse. Dead for nearly 200 years, this bard, visionary, genius, literary forger, field archaeologist, opium head and jailbird is still the cause of passionate debate in Wales and elsewhere. The arguments usually revolve around perceptions of Iolo’s establishment of the Gorsedd of the Bards in 1792 at Primrose Hill, north London, where he and a few of his mates stood within a circle of pebbles brought from Wales and mirrored Druidic rites that Iolo claimed to have uncovered in ancient manuscripts. They spoke prayers, sang hymns and founded the still-existing Gorsedd to promote Welsh language, folk culture, literature and the arts. Some historians now think that he wrote the rites while serving a prison sentence for debt and that the material derived from his opium-crazed imagination. Nevertheless Iolo’s rituals are still performed every August as part of the Welsh National Eisteddfod and his Gorsedd prayer is still used by Druids. Recent initiates to the Gorsedd include Dr Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, while the Queen is an ovate, and actor Richard Burton and prime minster David Lloyd George were past members.

To many, Iolo is the victim of an English revisionist attempt to oppress Welsh culture and tarnish the image of what was once a great civilisation. To others, he lived in times so dangerous for an outspoken republican anti-slavery campaigner, pacifist and hater of English tyranny, he had to hide behind the names of dead poets and writers to mask the subversive nature of his literature. He was followed by spies, arrested for sedition and widely viewed as a heretic. Ensuring he offended the tastes of everyone in power during his lifetime, he was also an opium eater, a vociferous religious dissenter, a political liberal and a supporter of the American rebels and the French Revolution. Iolo was also a witty guest and a brilliant storyteller, who wrote anti-war poems and drinking songs. He was a vegetarian, herbalist and tea addict, and walked the length and breadth of Wales accompanied by his horse, which he rode just once in his life. Although he received money from wealthy patrons in London and Wales, every now and then Iolo had to work for a living. During his life he was a stone mason, a farmer, a bookshop owner, and a grocer selling ‘East Indian Sweets: Uncontaminated by Human Gore’. Iolo’s main ambition was to cross the Atlantic in search of the Welsh Red Indians referred to in various manuscripts by Sir Walter Raleigh and other European explorers. By way of preparation he slept rough in the fields near his home but became ill, never recovering enough to make the trip. During his last days Iolo begged the surviving members of his family to fulfil his unfinished ambition.

‘So, Auntie ’Fon, is there no one else interesting in our family on Mam’s side?’

‘Come to think of it, Dyfnallt’s ancestor William Owen was quite famous in his time. Well, infamous would be a better way of describing him, as it would with you. They say he was the greatest-ever Welsh smuggler, not drugs mind. He was executed in Carmarthen. I think he wrote an autobiography, too. They discovered it quite recently. Now that’s a coincidence, isn’t it?’

I later found out the previously unknown autobiography of William Owen had turned up in 1982. After a few successful smuggling runs between Wales and the Isle of Man, Owen worked in South America for a well-armed worldwide smuggler known as The Terrible. My own smuggling activities had centred largely on Europe and Asia. Though I didn’t know it, I’d soon be heading for his old stamping ground. Owen’s sexual liaisons resulted in illegitimate children of all colours, and his chronicle of scams, acquittals and debauchery would put any modern-day smuggler or playboy to shame.

‘This gets better and better, Auntie ’Fon. Any others?’

‘Well there’s my mother’s half-brother Madoc. I can’t go into it too much. I think there was a bit of incest going on. There was more of that in those days. But he’s the bugger who gave me my name, Afon Wen, which I’ve never been bloody keen on. You know what it means, don’t you?’