Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth

Aberystwyth at Christmas. The smell of pine drifts along the Prom mingling with the reek of bladderwrack, toffee apple, vanilla and wet donkey fur . . . From somewhere beyond the spires of the old college children sing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’, and the siren from the distant prowl car wails in harmony. The ice man shivers behind his empty counter and in a filthy alley in Chinatown a man in a red-and-white coat with a long white beard lies dead in a pool of his own gore. In happier times the red robes of his office – like the red cross of Switzerland – conferred a species of neutrality in the never-ceasing disputes that wash over the Prom; but these are not happy times. The cruel melancholy of his death is heightened by an extra finesse: his manhood has been hacked off and placed in his mouth. And with the last of his strength the man has dipped a finger in his own blood and written a word on the pavement: ‘Hoffmann’. With the blood beginning to freeze and glitter like raspberry ripple, the school art teacher, Mrs Dinorwic-Jones, kneels beside the dead Santa and prepares to draw a chalk outline around the corpse. Just like so many times before; but this is not like the times before. Her hand shakes uncontrollably and tonight the white chalk line zig-zags in and out like the outline of an electrocuted polecat. Aberystwyth at Christmas. Compliments of the Season.

Editorial, Cambrian News, Christmas 1989