Swansea in Full Spring

Swansea welcomed me back with three days of sun. I snatched the opportunity for a beach wander and a read on the green.

Sandals were a bit optimistic; it's always colder by the sea.

Singleton Park

 

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Sunny Swansea

Swansea is the wettest city in Britain (Wales Online). If it isn't gushing cold little rice-grain pellets, it's still spitting. Or it mists, so you breathe in the rain. Pluviophiles love it.

 

My housemates talked about the solar eclipse for days ahead of time. Estela bought certified solar viewers a month ago.

The night before the eclipse I thought I'd wake up to low, gray stratus clouds obscuring the sky. But Friday morning sun through my window burst me awake before my 7:30 a.m. alarm

All across the beach in front of the uni, students knotted in groups with phones and cardboard boxes at the ready. Even in this day and age, rare natural events are worth skipping class or missing having a lie-in.

 

Joy and I played the quiz game over Narnia books and Jane Austen protagnoists while we made our DIY sun projector and waited for the moment. The two-hour eclipse peaked at 9:28 a.m. The temperature dropped. All at once I realized that everything that was green earlier was now dusky gray. Way far out, sparkling madly at the lip of the horizon like a motorcycle engine in July, was the sea.

And the sun. The sky was hazy with pollution, but not a cloud to block the sun.

It was just a fingernail sliver of light like a crescent moon.

 

Photo courtesy of Paige Bowyer

 

Photo courtesy of Estela Summer

 

Swansea may be the rainy capital of the Britain but she's sunny when it counts.

Photo courtesy of Paige Bowyer

 

Apparently, Swansea is a great spot for solar panels: link).

Beach selfie courtesy of Paige Bowyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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From the Poet's Mouth

Dylan Thomas, Swansea-born poet, called his place of birth an "ugly, lovely, town." That line has been circulating in my head since I got here. So much of Swansea is glorious--the seaweed-littered shore, the well-kept gardens, the unexpected doorways, the Welsh, English, French, and Brazilian accents, the ever-steaming kettles.

At first I was aghast that he would call this city ugly, but I'm realizing that on this earth even the most paradisical place has blemishes. Smoke here congregates in stifling clouds around doorways, the borrowed bus stinks, the floor above me creaks like it's going to fall in, in the city scaffolding marrs old, stone structures, and on campus colorful 80s designed buildings rise like a jester against the gray sky.

 

But it's the ugliness that makes the lovely all the more worth having. Or is it the other way around? The loveliness makes the ugliness worth giving a chance.

Joy has declared multiple times already, "We are moving here!"

I am happy to have no choice in the matter.

 

 

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