Insufficiently Welsh by Griff Rhys Jones

Author:Griff Rhys Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2014-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

– A MAGIC LANTERN –

I wanted to meet the modern wizard of Aberdyfi: the contemporary myth-maker Geoff Roustabout. This man (formerly Geoff Hill) had recently stepped up to keep Aberdyfi in its seaside wet afternoon entertainment by buying the Magic Lantern Cinema.

Geoff was not much of film buff himself. “Before I owned this place I only went to the cinema four times over ten years,” he told me.

Now it took up 30 hours of his time a week. He hated to see “a cultural service” die and he had refurbished the little Welsh seaside resort with its own Greatest Show on Earth: a stylish foyer and a grand auditorium, decorated with impressive murals of the masters of cinema. I hadn’t expected to find an art house in the far west. But then when you are remote you have to make your own entertainment.

“We had the full version of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ including the interval just the other night,” Geoff said proudly, as we settled into his plush tip-up seats. He also showed first-run Hollywood blockbusters and linked up to a network of simulcasts of theatre and opera events.

Geoff was not a local. “I have a tent business,” he told me as we watched a film of the local area together. “We make tents for festivals and you’ll find our marquees at all the major outdoor events. In fact, my boys are bringing some of the big ones back from Glastonbury even as we speak.”

I sensed that Geoff was a proud showman of the old school. He had been in the events business for thirty years and owned his own company for twenty. The same spirit that said “of course we can have a festival for twenty thousand people in these fields” had started to add little extras to Aberdyfi life.

He told me that he had thought about the cinema for a whole weekend. Viewed it on the Friday and bought it on the Tuesday. He had also been influential in the rented tree house holiday villas I had just left.

“Absurdly fantastic things,” I ventured.

“All the better for that.” Geoff extolled the virtue of enterprise out here in the sticks. People worked harder for less money. They were prepared to try out new ideas. There was little competition.

Geoff had also bought a disused boat yard. “It wasn’t expensive,” he told me. He had built a clubhouse on his boatyard site by dragging an old fishing boat up on the hard and cutting a door in it. He was currently heavily involved in the attempt to hold onto the Shed of the Year award. He won in 2012 by erecting a shed on a floating pontoon and mooring it just offshore.

That shed had now gone up a nearby mountain to be a “summit shed”. The pontoon was put to another use. Geoff took me to his blue BMW sports car. His excited black Labrador climbed on to the back shelf and slid around somewhere between my ears and the plastic rear window

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