Subject: Edrychwch ar y rhestr yma!!! 

There's a sinister plot hatching here... 

Am I the only person on this list who does not speak Welsh?* What is Robyn's connection with the Welsh? My guess is that those fiends in the Welsh Development Agency are somehow forcing Robyn to help them capture the world cheese market (following the collapse of the coal industry...) 

(start of CHEESE/WISCONSIN thread overlap here?-click on here to go to cheese thread) 
 

The lyrics to Robyn's songs seem surrealistic, eh? Well what would you say if they were really secretly coded instructions to Robyn's brainwashed followers to rise and move to Wisconsin, where, by popular vote, Robyn will be elected governor and will decree that the entire state be airlifted by 4,789 Zeppelin airships to a convenient spot in the Irish Sea just off Aberystwyth? The decoded instructions are kept in Welsh, of course, for maximum secrecy (Navaho having been taken already), since the average percentage of population who speak the language is exactly 0%. Everyone who listens to Robyns records has been subliminally taught the language - even though many of them are not even aware of it.Thanks to the stalwart decoding of every Hitchcock lyric ever -including counting every 'yip' and 'nin' - crack(ed) decoders Jeme and Bayard have unraveled the whole sordid story. Even as I type this, The Great Quails' alter ego, Professor Fane, is passing out deprogramming tapes under the guise of the latest tape tree. So Messrs Welsh Development Agency, your sinister plot for world cheese domination is over. Your fatal mistake was to assemble such an unlikely number of Welsh speakers on one internet mailing list - a sure clue! 

Now it's all over, oes ofn arnoch chi? 

Remember; Rydw i wedi gweld y dyn - dydy e ddim yn dod! 

~N 

> There's a sinister plot hatching here... 

You ain't kiddin'. 

Subject: Welsh 

Subject: Rrobynn llurkynng? 

Jonathan Turner rambled on, and then added: 

> Probably something to do with Robyn rambling on about 

> Aberystwyth at the 12 Bar last night). 

What?? The very location even now gearing up for mass production of Caerphilly-head hats in anticipation of the relocation of a certain midwestern American state? This secret information was revealed - mere hours before the gig - to only you few select Fegs. 

OK. Who snitched? 

James wrote:<actually Welsh was used for code too, in WWI. All the suggestion of 

You turned your fellow band members on Robyn? I hope they didn't hurt him too badly! 

>"Turning on the Robyn" is a Welsh expression. I believe the North American equivalent would be "Hanging a Rat". How Invisible Hitchcock aided Luther in the performance of this act is a deep mystery to me. 

OK, "ALright, stop that now!! Too silly!!!" 

>Probably something to do with Robyn rambling on about 

>Aberystwyth at the 12 Bar last night). 

hmmm. the thot plickens... why is RH talking about Wales? 

Gidday Fegs. 

I've been watching you lot wallowing in this veritable orgy of Welsh connections with a mixture of amusement and shame over the past week or so. Amusement, because although I reside in the antipodes, I am an official card carrying Welshman (although I have not set foot on the fabled province for many a year). In that case, why should I feel shame , I hear you ask?. We-e-e-e-e-e-e-ell, I can 't remember hardly any bloody Welsh, due to the fact that I was too busy singing and digging coal to learn any. Actually, as I am a Southwalian , its not surprising, as a majority of the population don't speak Welsh and those that do often speak a sort of pigeon Welsh, mixing the two languages and using more English words than Welsh. Anyhow, I find it humiliating that all you fegs can speak Welsh and I can't , so after I write this I will retire to a corner with a Welsh /english phrase book and not return until I am completly fluent in at least the most pungent and pithy Welsh put downs, so I can hold my own on the list when Things get hectic. 

Several points have been raised about our singing habits and perhaps I can elucidate on some of them. Singing is actually a major problem in Wales, as it is often impossible to go to sleep at night due to gangs of defeated drunken Welsh rugby fans roaming the streets singing Sospan fach and other less lugubrious ditties. Moreover,carrying out normal activities in most shops, banks, apothecaries , cinema's and other public places is nigh impossible on nearly all occasions due to the incessant singing by the shop staff who all belong to male voice choirs practicing for Eisteddfodai. Due to equal opportunity laws, the situation has worsened as now all females belong to choirs too . I must admit that I bear my share of guilt .When I was in art college in Swansea we used to sing "Born under a Bad Sign" in close harmony to annoy our tutor and even now I wander around the house singing loudly and annoying all my close family members, so you see it is something that is inbred, genetic and impossible to curb. 

However, James,. I'm afraid the only people in Wales who do NOT sing are policemen. I base this on personal experience. Whenever I encountered a policeman in my torrid youth in Wales they just refused to sing, they were too busy taking me into custody at two in the morning on suspicion of jewel robberies( the guy who fingered me actually committed the robbery) and trying to stop me from riding my 1938 Norton side valve 500cc bike and sidecar , complete with laundry basket chair. One of my friends was the son of the police chief of Swansea and he told me in strictest condfidence that his old man never sang, especially when Julian ( the son ) absconded with his entire terms grant and bought a motorbike with the proceeds. Nope, they don't sing, bloody killjoys to a person they are. 

Finally, I can now break my cover as the antipodean Welsh connection in the fiendish plot to annexe Wisconsin . You got most of it right , but we Welsh are cunning you know. It was too bloody obvious to drop the state next to Wales, you must think we are twp ( dull or stupid) . The Irish sea would have been the first place to look.Ha , that was just a blind , you poor fools.The real site was down under.The reason I migrated to Australia in the first place was to set in train the 18 year process of brainwashing the Fegs, undermining the foundations of the state and establishing the Australian cheese industry so that all Ozzie cheeses would taste like Caerphilly. Once this was done, squads of specially trained Rock Wallabays and Wombats would kidnap Wisconsin , place a cardboard replica in the Irish sea and then ferret away the REAL Wisconsin to the great Australian bight ( which no one ever visits anyway). Only then would the state be settled by plane loads of expatriate Patagonian Welshmen, all hand picked cheesy artisans to the core, who would set up massive cheese processing plants , where our cheeses would be impregnated with microscopic Welsh language viruses which would worm their way into the unsuspecting consumers brain ,undermining their previous identity and brainwashing them into thinking they were fully functioning Welshmen. Then the world wouldhave been ripe for the plucking , ready for domination by the Welsh cheese marketing board! However , our plans were dashed by your unveiling of the location of our cardboard replica , curse you fegs! 

Anyway Im off to do some more singing in the garden as its 10;30 pm and I havent annoyed the neighbours for at least 30 minutes. 

Bore da 

Subject: RE:back to Wales, briefly 

Dave waffled: 

>James blathered: 

>HG Wells is of course mentioned in the song Victorian Squid. Victorian? 

(snipped) 

>on the Fegmaniax list !!!!!! also , my daughter and I have recently been singing the Old trout mask replica refrain" A squid eating dough 

Ah! The Old Trout. Once Windsor's leading music venue (and the scene of one of the Egyptian's last gigs, I believe, as well as the debut gig by my brother's band - where they out-Robynned Robyn by covering Lou Reed and Jimi Hendrix in the same set), now sadly closed. And very close to a big statue of Queen Victoria! Can the appearance of "Victorian Squid" in last week's set at the 12 Bar be mere coincidence ? I think not. And that statue of Victoria, while it may not have a walkman, is just outside one of the homes of Her Majesty the Queen - mother of the Prince of, yes, WALES. Clearly, while not a cormorant or a shag, the Old Trout is the home this Welsh conspiracy - thanks to Dave and his daughter for stumbling on this! Truly, the good Captain Beefheart is the Nostradamus of our age. 

>through a polyetheline bag, etc, and james mentioned squids !! so it all 

>dovetails pretty neatly I think 

>Its all quite simple really when you reason it out. 

>Dave lang ( the olde fartt from dowyn undere) 

Subject: Welsh growth -- in Japan 

From the London Daily Telegraph: 

A growing number of Japanese are signing up for classes in Welsh as the language develops a cult status that its devotees say gives them a sense of individuality in group-oriented Japan. 

Two Welsh-speaking clubs meet every month and Japan's first text book on the language has recently been published. 

The doyen of Japan's Welsh speakers is Hywel Glyndwr, or Professor Hioshi Mizutani. He has studied Welsh for 20 years and is the author of Mainchini Wales - Go O Hanasoo (Let's Speak Welsh Every Day). The 250-page book covers everything from pronunciation to culture and history. 

"It may even increase the number of Welsh speakers in an unexpected corner of the world", writes Alan Thomas, a Welsh scholar,in the book's preface. 

The Tokyo Welsh Speaking Circle, or Cylch Siarad Cymraeg Tocio, has found the book indispensable. The group has about 15 members and each session tackles a new conversation in Welsh. 

One member, who hardly needs to practice, is Takeshi Koike, a graduate student studying Old English. "Probably the best Welsh speaker in Tokyo", said one of his Welsh friends. 

When he speaks English, his accent has a decidedly Welsh lilt, which he picked up along with his Welsh in Lampeter. "I learned the language in the choir," he said, "I was the only man in the group and all the women were really keen to teach me Welsh."Koike said that discovering Welsh made him think about cultural diversity. "In Japan, we're more or less all the same. So, I was surprised to find out that even in a country the size of Britain there were distinct languages." 

He said the fact that Japanese take up unusual pursuits, such as studying Welsh, reflects much about contemporary Japan. The pressure to conform to the group norm and not stand out from the crowd can be suffocating. 

"We are so homogeneous that we put some value on things that only a few people do," he said. Yuko Nakauchi, 20, the newest recruit to the Tokyo circle, agrees. She only came across the language whenshe saw what she thought was a British film, One Full Moon, and did not understand what anyone was saying. Inspired, she went to Wales last summer for a course. 

Mizutani, who teaches a group of about 20 enthusiasts in Nagoya, believes that with Japan's increasing industrial and tourism links withWales, more Japanese will take an interest in the country and its language. 

Subject: RE: Welsh growth in japan 

Ross quoth >From the London Daily Telegraph: 

A growing number of Japanese are signing up for classes in Welsh as the language develops a cult status that its devotees say gives them a sense of individuality in group-oriented Japan. 

 You see !, the Quailspiracy,its spreading everywhere, and I bet the buggers eat cheese and squid! If so, head for the hills!! 

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