The ramparts of Tre’r Ceiri |
I clicked open the new e-mail. It read: “We are providing the technical
facilities for a live broadcast event in March. The broadcaster has asked
if we can supply a webcast from the outside broadcast location. We
require the webcast for eight days — approximately six hours per
day. Location: North Wales, non ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line)
area.” I telephoned the sender, Jim, who was senior engineer for
the TV production company involved. A few weeks later I was headed north,
north west. “Bring your walking boots,” Jim had said.
The “event” was a week-long show, a cross between “Big
Brother” and “I’m a Celebrity” The celebs included
Janet Street-Porter, the famously acerbic media personality (who, judging
by her recent appearance in the jungle, seems to have developed quite a
liking for reality television shows), Jamie Shaw from “Pop idol:
the rivals”, paralympic athlete Tanni Grey-Thompson OBE, actors Ruth
Madoc and Bernie Latham, singer/songwriter Amy Wadge and 80s pop icon Steve
Strange. They were to be locked away and forced to do silly things, while
also learning Welsh, for a week. It was an interesting choice of “celebs” given
that Janet was on record as calling the Welsh language “ugly and
ludicrous” and as having “no words for anything after the Black
Death”.
Amy Wadge and the view from the centre |
The programme was to go out from the location for an hour
each evening but every day it would go out live via me and the
internet. The location was practically off the map I had. It was on the
opposite coast of the Lleyn Peninsula from Pwllheli, a place of Iron
Age hill forts, neolithic tombs, standing stones, ancient trackways and
myths,
and where the mountains fall sheer into the sea.
It was around one of those mountains I now drove. The track led steeply
down through a forest, opening suddenly on heart-stopping views of the
slate-blue sea far below. Crawling around the dangerous hairpins, I could
see that the track ended at a cluster of stone buildings in a clearing
between the trees and the beach. This was Nant Gwrtheyrn, the Welsh Language
and Learning Centre. There would be no way out in bad weather.
This valley was supposed to be where Gwrtheyrn finally stopped running
from the Saxons he had unwittingly let into Britain (he gave the Isle
of Thanet to Hors and Hengist and they brought their mates across). Nennius’ ‘Historia
Brittonum’ mentions that Gwrtheyrn travelled with his druids to “Guunnessi”,
which sounds as if it should be an Irish theme pub. The location was finally
pinned down in 1963 by Melville Richards. As if that were not enough, King
Arthur was also a visitor, currently sleeping under the earth on Bardsey
island to my left, ready to wake and resume duties at a moment’s
notice. There were also stories of lovers’ skeletons found in storm-split
oaks, dragons fighting in the skies and lone figures wandering,
demented, over the hills. So I suppose I should not have expected “reality” to
be “normal” here at all. The set-up
I was met by Jim, who looked like an
explorer from a bygone age with earnest blue eyes. He shook my hand firmly
and began to show me round. Jim had a long history with the BBC and that
generally meant the best technical skills in the world. As we walked
over the granite slabs he explained that the centre had opened in 1978,
renovated
from the ruins of 24 houses dating from 1878 and originally built to
house workers for the slate and granite quarries. The houses sat in two
L-shaped
rows, the row facing the sea called “Sea View” and the other, “Mountain
View”.
The ramparts of Tre’r Ceiri |
The mountains were impressive, rising up starkly from the
sea. There were three peaks known as “The Rivals”. One was
crowned with a spectacular stone age fortress, “Tre’r Ceiri”,
often known as the “Fortress
of the Giants” supposedly one of the most impressive iron age sites
in Britain.
“You can see why I said to bring walking boots,” Jim said. He went
on to explain that there would be a four-hour gap between my morning
and evening webcasts while the celebs lunched and rested — a good opportunity
to hike!
Sea-side of Mountain View stood an altogether grander building with high
ceilings and wide corridors. It was called the “Plas”, once
the home of the quarry manager. All the Welsh lessons I was webcasting
would take place here.
“When I came down here I must admit I scratched my head for a few days,” Jim
said, referring, in his typically understated way, to the technical design
he had come up with. Standing within the “L” of the buildings,
nothing gave the game away except for a single white van with a satellite
dish on its roof and someone called Rob inside. But as we walked behind
onto the mud, I saw optical and copper cables festooning the backs of the
buildings, pouring out of the windows and doors. A generator hummed beside
Jim’s smallest outside broadcast truck. The set up not only allowed
the capture of all the footage but the full production of live programmes
that went straight to air.
“Do you speak Welsh,” Jim asked. I shook my head. “Pity,” he
went on, “as this is a Welsh language production all the crew speak
in Welsh most of the time.” Surveillance
I was not sure which houses held celebs and which held the dozens of
techies and
creatives who worked invisibly day and night sifting through the hours
of daily footage. Inside the chilly, two-up-two-down quarrymen’s
houses I marvelled at the tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment
perched and squeezed into the tiny rooms. In one of the bedrooms, the voice-over
specialist stood, ready to come in on cue during the filmed inserts that
were played out during the live show.
Jim helped me unload my gear into a kitchen in Mountain View. He bent down
to go through the door into the other room to fetch audio and video feeds.
I saw a young woman cradling a mug of tea, snuggled up in a scarf. Her
eyes glistened like coal as she stared towards the fireplace. As I moved
towards the doorway I could see there was in fact no fireplace — it
was hidden by racks of flickering black and white monitors. The woman leaned
forward, adjusting a camera angle, then threw a switch and we could hear
every word coming from a kitchen in which two of the celebs were snacking.
She put down the mug and reached for a clipboard to log the event.
Outside, against the expanse of the sea, and buffeted by the wind, camera
crews stalked or lay in wait as the celebs made their way
between houses or to lessons. Cameras hidden in high windows watched over
the courtyard and walkways. Monitors showed the frantic preparations of
sets and activities in the restaurant before the live shows. Then a technician
would walk off a screen and come in through the doorway where I huddled
behind the production assistants and Nia, with her scarf. I squeezed my
way out of the crowded room to find air only to bump into Bernie Latham,
transformed from a black and white celeb into a real figure, the smoke
of his cigarette snatched away by the wind. “Hi,” he said.
I was losing my sense of reality. Producers would pop in with the latest
gossip and I would hear tantalising snatches of English about what Janet
had said to the driver and then to the production company. The main director,
a woman with flaxen hair, who had parked her jasmine tea near the sink
behind me, would talk over my head about the planned sequences and potential
problems of the evening show. Then Jamie and Amy would suddenly appear
alongside, wanting to see how the webcast was going. I would turn from
the screen and wonder what was real, the two beside me or the people on
the webcast.
Jim and Rob would often pop in for a cup of tea and a technological chat.
One day, when Rob was half way up a hill chatting to someone in Northern
Ireland on the four meter band (as if controlling a mobile satellite earth
station was not enough), Jim told me about the days when BBC Wales had
just two tape machines each weighing half a ton. The ITV had bought the
rights to a key football match and the BBC had only got the deal to receive
it from them for rebroadcasting later. But Jim and his team reckoned they
could rig the tape coming off the recording machine and run it right round
the walls of the room onto the other machine and straight out onto the
air. ITV hit the roof, but because of the short delay, the broadcast was
not “live” and, therefore, within the terms of the contract.
Nothing would ever be the same again. Quarry
Jim had loaned me a map and I used it to
investigate the quarries. The path from the houses led past a ledge where
Amy played her guitar. She sang a beautiful and melancholy song as a
rare shaft of sunlight fired up her hair. Cables from the camera and sound
crew
looked like chains penning her in, converting this abundance of reality
into digital. The bytes would be hacked and trimmed that
afternoon and be bound for the hearths of Wales that night.
Nant Gwrtheyrn, the Welsh Language and Learning Centre |
Down on the
beach were the remains of a jetty that used to load 200-ton ships with
cut slate “sets” bound for Liverpool and Manchester.
Crumbling remains of early barracks leaned towards the waves and huge
iron implements flaked and peeled their way slowly back to nature. I
picked
my way up an incline that looked down on Nant Gwerthryn. Rusted pieces
of cable showed their backs through the yellow grass. In the past, men
had worked in “bargain gangs” of four, six or eight, often
trekking 30 or 40 miles for a six-day shift because the money was better
than on the farms. The price for a certain area of rock would be agreed
with the quarry manager. He gave the men subs and they had to pay him
for their ropes, chains, tools and services such as sharpening and repairing.
He also owned the shop. Things were settled up on “the day of the
big pay” when, if work had gone badly, the men could end up owing
the management. This system was not abolished until after the 1939–45
war.
When the houses were built, the workers’ families joined them. Though
they now had a chapel and school, a local historian and chapel-goer referred
to the valley as “the most ungodly and uncivilized place in Llyn
and Eifionydd”. I stood on the edge of one of the high galleries
that led, like giants’ steps, up the mountain. The raw cliffs rose
behind me and Atlantic wind raked the puddles. The men would have worked
all day here, even in the teeth of the gales, protected only by wool and
oilskins, their leather soles slipping on the wet slate. And this powdered
slate, or Fullerite, was used as a base in the cosmetics industry. I thought
of the toil beneath my feet being applied to pale faces in the ballrooms
of Paris and New York. Now their sons and daughters toiled below in the
edit suite, carving and shaping reality. Lunch is served
Trooping off for lunch was an experience. We queued with the celebs and
would even on occasions have the honour of passing them cutlery. There
was an informal seating arrangement
so the celebs tended to coalesce. I made the mistake of not piping up early
enough on my table of strangers with the result that they all assumed I
spoke Welsh, including the waitress. It was “the meal of the strange
head movements”. Somehow I managed to order food and to hold several
conversations through facial contortion alone. I did not have a clue what
I had ordered or when it had arrived, which was embarrassing. I sat opposite
the voice-over man. Every little thing was low, resonant and deeply meaningful — only
not to me. He must have thought I was mental with all that nodding and
the twitching of eyebrows and lip. Classroom
You never knew exactly what was going to happen in the classroom. The
teachers used advanced techniques with music, movement and games. I
had to monitor
where they were going and adjust pan and zoom controls all the time.
There were frequent outbursts: “You’re teaching us crap Welsh — this
is the stuff for shopping in Spar. I don’t want to go shopping in
Spar, I want to drink cappuccino and talk politics. How am I going to do
that with this vocabulary?”
Initially seen as the thorn among the roses, Janet became the crew’s
favourite because of her razor wit. As the week progressed, she and the
group bonded. Even the audience changed their opinions after she was able
to say “Two cappuccinos please” in Welsh.
Another day there was a real commotion among the producers. I couldn’t
find out what had happened but they told me, seconds before we were due
to go live, not to webcast that morning’s session.
“What about my audience,” I said, in my best prima donna manner, “I
can’t have them all sitting there watching blank screens.”
They reluctantly gave permission, provided I was ready to pull the plug
at a moment’s
notice. There followed a nervous few hours. I was told that one of the
celebs was to leave the programme with immediate effect. The
producers were afraid this person would storm into the classroom and make
some announcement into the fixed camera and thus straight out onto the
web. The incident appeared to be one of a pharmacognostical nature. Oriental flight
One clear morning, 10 minutes before we went live, it became apparent
that there was no one in the classroom in the Plas. I tapped the monitor
but
it made no difference. The room was definitely empty. Where were they?
Where was the teacher? I got on the blower.
They’ve decided to do Tai Chi outside,” said a producer.
“Um, the webcast??!” I replied.
“Oh … damn … I’m sorry . . .”
I could see their point — the sky was blue and the wind had dropped
below gale force. They were going to use the small paddock in the centre
of the buildings. I needed to get a camera and microphone on it fast.
Running along Sea View we located and rejigged one of the surveillance
cameras so that it covered the paddock. I sprinted back down Mountain View
to attach my own back up mic and spare cable, running this out through
the front door onto a wall pointing at the celebs, who by this time were
limbering up. With a few adjustments, we went live on time. Unfortunately
another group had also taken a look at the weather and decided to have
an outing. They were called the RAF.
So as these graceful, anoraked figures stretched and poised, like storks
and cranes under Mount Fuji, the Tornados split the air above, roaring
across the skies in spiralling dogfights. And when the noise did die down
all you could hear was a concerto of nylon anoraks, a couple of Welsh words,
and the odd bleat of a lost lamb. It must have been the weirdest Tai Chi
soundtrack ever. Strippers
The outside broadcast truck was where the director performed. With two
engineers, she called the shots. She would speak directly to the camera
crews and presenters during the show to guide them and to keep the pace
and activity entertaining. At certain points she would cut to an insert
that had been created from the daily footage after calling up and preparing
the voice over man in his chilly hideout. The scary thing was that the
show had to start absolutely on the second as it went straight out onto
S4C’s network via Rob, the man in the van.
Three hours before one show, the director let me into the plan for that
evening. The celebs had been learning parts of the body so tonight’s
live surprise was a group of three male strippers from London. A driver
had been dispatched to Bangor to collect them.
Then the driver rang. The strippers had missed the train. They were apparently
on a later train and he was confident he could still get them back before
the show. It was not easy to find enough things to do for the live shows.
They had used some game show
formats, such as memorising items and doing individual party pieces. There
were meetings during the day to plan the details but a lot had to be done
by thinking on one’s feet.
The driver rang again. The strippers were not on the second train. In fact
they were not on any train and one was locked up in a
police cell. The evening show was vanishing before our eyes as the director
turned to me with an appealing look: “Would you mind? I mean it would
be quite easy …”
Luckily I had played a lot of rugby in earlier days — so my side-step
was very fast indeed.
An urgent rethink was required. Janet agreed to appear with the celebs
in the restaurant-bar (now with settees etc, as per studio set) for an
interview during which she would explain that she had some writing to do.
This would pave the way for the second half of the show, when, following
general celeb chat, the cameras would trek out to
investigate Janet “at home” and do a profile. Combined with
the day’s video inserts, this would make up a show.
Listening in to the director’s comments to crew and presenter was
fascinating and you had to admire the way that the presenter never let
on that a voice in the ear was constantly saying “speed up” or “get
more from them” or “wind it up in five seconds”.
During an earlier live interview, Janet had completely redefined the interviewer-interviewee
relationship as the microphone approached by saying to the good looking,
confident young man: “You’re
short. I’m taller than you and I’m sat on a bar stool.”
I watched on the monitors as the second half of the show got under way.
The crew looked like assassins, rushing along corridors and out across
the paving stones, umbilically connected to the OB truck. They had to be
in position before the video insert finished.
It was like a scene from “Alien” and I was wondering who was
going to get it. They opened Janet’s door and stepped into the light.
Janet was magnificent. She opened her heart, created humour, pathos and
understanding — and stole the show. There was a degree of relief
in the OB truck as we went off air. The castle of the giants
Climbing through the forest towards the peaks and the fortress of Tre’r
Ceiri was like travelling back in time. Past the celebs and the optical
fibres, past the quarries, abandoned homesteads and field systems — out
onto the scratched and windswept uplands. I felt the heather through my
boots and the bracken in my nostrils. I walked like someone demented, but
then I did have to be back in time for the afternoon webcast.
At the top of the highest peak, Yr Eifl,
almost 2,000 feet above Nant Gwrtheyrn, the view over the coast is spectacular.
Turning from the sea you face Tre’r Ceiri across a small valley.
Its stone ramparts rise up three metres around the narrow summit and the
interior is packed with the remains of 150 huts, circular, oval or square,
whose walls are still up to a metre high. You can well imagine it to be
the home of gods, warriors or terrorists in the eyes of those living below.
Dropping down and climbing up again to reach the fortress entrance, you
pass into
another world. You ascend the ramparts,
feeling the cold rasp of the indifferent stone against the heat in your
palms. And standing there, leaning out with the fist of the wind in your
chest, time vanishes.
Exploring the huts I wondered if these people had their own celebs. I
squatted down in a round house, getting a feel for the spaces they lived
in and
their rituals. Suddenly it came to me. There was something linking Jim
and me to this society that was thousands of years old. I stood up and
looked over the ramparts. It was our own witchcraft that
created and maintained the castles in the air of this new celebrity culture:
Jim and I were 21st century shamans. We digitised tiny clips of reality
from the fortresses of our gods and sent them down along our cables and
airways to possess the domestic shrine that is the
television set. We were guilty of creating selective, distorted reality
inside people’s heads. And if only everyone could come and see the
real reality, all the castles would crumble.
Some of the round houses were joined, some had annexes and some were
attached in pairs. Goodness — these people had invented the “semi”.
I scratched at the ground looking for the remains of MDF then made tracks,
carrying the unnerving thought that the make-over show could also be a
lot older than I had thought. Cracks in the castle
It was early afternoon on the last day when we got the news. RAF Valley
on Anglesey had confirmed that heavy snow was
expected. This would cut us off and no one could predict for how long.
Was the place trying to claim us for ever, with the weather
trying to turn us into frozen druids?
The decision was taken to evacuate and we had only a couple of hours in
which to do it. The plan was to take everything to studios in Caernarfon
and set up in time for the last evening show. All the cables had to be
detached, unthreaded and coiled; all the
equipment had to be packed and the cottages emptied once more. The celebs
were whisked off immediately to a posh hotel leaving
us behind with the real challenge. Janet had
left by car earlier, having an appointment for lunch at Buckingham Palace.
She would be driven back to the new location in time for show.
The director rushed past me holding her jasmine tea aloft.
“That’s it. That’s me de-rigged,” she said.
I helped extricate cables and equipment. We ran the boxes into the trucks as
the
minutes rolled past. The snow was already falling as I packed my own equipment
and ran to fetch the car. The track was white but still passable — just.
Reaching the studio in Caernarfon we set up in the bar. Soon it had become
a brightly lit kitchen. The show was to feature a top Welsh chef giving the
celebs cooking and language tests. At the last minute someone remembered to
put tape over the fire alarm sensor situated directly over the hotplates.
Outside it looked like a Christmas card;
inside it felt like a war zone. I grabbed a snack in the canteen with Nia and
then we nervously watched the show. Not surprisingly, it lacked polish. The
celebs themselves were strangely disconnected. They seemed to have too much
make-up on and they made odd comments that fell flat. The presenter ran out
of things to say as the cameras kept rolling. It seemed that finally we had
all lost touch with reality.
So that was that, and I was to crawl back through the snow down the length
of Wales carrying a gallery of memories towards my own day of the big pay.
As I passed houses, I pictured their inhabitants turning off the light as they
headed upstairs and shaking their heads at the state of the nation’s
TV. They were right. They had glimpsed though the myth and seen the cracks
in the castle for a few short minutes. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal