I arrived in Rhayader just before eight o’clock as the sun began to set in the east. The people were mad, mad to live, mad to drink, mad to speak Welsh in 2010, mad to be saved. I like the mad ones, I thought, checking into a Powys guest house which “acts as a great base from which to explore this fascinating area” (UK Hotel).
I spoke to Gwyneth on reception and knew that somewhere along the line there’d be visions, small kettles, everything. Somewhere along the line the room key would be handed to me. Thirty seconds later, it was.
Sitting on the edge of my bed I heard the sounds of the night which had come to represent Rhayader and the people. Kelly Jones’ voice bopped through the air of the local Wetherspoons, and I picked myself up and wearily headed out for what I knew would be a heavy night.
I was back in my hotel room two hours after leaving. I fumbled around for the bag of cotton wool I keep next to my bed at home only I wasn’t home, I was far away in a cheap hotel I’d hardly known, unsure as I stumbled past the small kettle to the en-suite bathroom, old wood creaks and old man snore, and after about 15 bloody weird seconds I figured out what had happened to me: I’d had another nose bleed after three pints.
Four ham sandwiches later, I sat up and looked to make sense of my crazy, crazy trip. I grasped the emergency sellotape roll I keep in my shoes and taped my phone to any stationery I could find so I wouldn’t run out of places to write should my battery die. I had something to say and I only found it when I logged into Twitter:
I saw that the best mind of my generation, David Mitchell, had retweeted me. Starving, hysterial, naked David Mitchell, burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night (Twitter).
So in Wales when the sun goes down and I sit in a broken-down Rhayader hotel room, when I see that wasteland and dream its immensity, don’t you know that God is David Mitchell?
