Welsh beauty spot car park approved for visitors
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South Wales Argus
30 minutes ago
- South Wales Argus
A huge welcome to these new Gwent babies
Every week on our New Arrivals page we give them a big welcome to the world. If you've recently had a baby and would like to share your news with us go to and fill in our easy-to-use Q&A. Rory Hugh Pritchard was born on July 23, 2025, at the Grange University Hospital, near Cwmbran, weighing 6lb 4oz. He is the first child of Emily and Alex Pritchard, of Newport. Oaklee-Anthony Clive Purcell was born on August 4, 2025, at the Grange University Hospital, near Cwmbran, weighing 7lb 6oz. His parents are Aisha Hopper and Morgan Purcell, of Cwmbran, and his big sister is Scarlett-rose Price, three.
The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
I was one of those pathetic males who barely noticed cats. Then I became smitten with my kitten
I'm in love with my cat. He sleeps by my writing desk all day on the cotton lining of my inside-out parka. At the end of the day, I crash into the beanbag and he climbs up on my chest and we nap. To be clear, this is our family cat, but yes, in an eye-rollingly predictable move, the cat gravitated to the person in the household who was least interested. My now-disgruntled partner and our son campaigned for a cat for quite some time. My partner, let's call her Cat Follower, is a cat follower (online and down the street). You can't walk a block without her having to stop while she chases or coaxes a kitty from somewhere, eagle-eyed (is it wrong to mix in this bird metaphor?) and begins to smooch and trill and do whiskery tsks-tsks with her tongue. Ooh, you're a feisty one, aren't you, she whispers. They often are. They're rarely morose chumps. I do realise I fall into a lineage of pathetic males who claim to barely notice cats until one turns in their direction, at which point said male abruptly U-turns from ambivalent to love-drunk smitten (skitten?). I spent part of my childhood on a farm where none of our pets were allowed inside the house. This meant dogs and cats were closer to the category of cow and chicken. They were treated by adults with a certain disdain; it was meant to be good for them. In hindsight it was often a guise for a lazy cruelty. I became a vegetarian as soon as I became an adult. Cats were a smoke that mingled with the shade beneath your feet and my little sister cuddled them along with ducklings and chicks and it appeared to be my job to find this fey or silly. According to family folklore, she also cuddled a fluffy gold duckling all day until its head propped forward. But, yes, my partner and our son campaigned and slowly I began to come to the following conclusion – small cats are small shade, like leaves. Or maybe it was more like: tiny cats are compact and probably have tiny sounds. Nonetheless, I acquiesced on the one condition. It had to be a small one. A small cat. The mistake Cat Follower made was to allow me to be the one to pick up our little 'fully grown' kitten from the lost cat hotel. He'd been given the name Nathan and we thought that was quite funny at the time. I placed Nathan's cage carefully in the footspace of the passenger seat of our old car and chatted to him all the way home to keep him calm. Nathan, you're so small, you'll fit right in. I'd read that it's good to acclimatise new cats to your home, one room at a time, so I blocked off the rest of the house and carefully opened his cat cage in the living room. I figured this was a good approach to living with a cat, too – open one compartment of your heart at a time, but Nathan burst out and immediately climbed right up on to my chest to nuzzle my forehead, making me topple backwards in some magic glittering hoodwink. It was as if he'd read about newborns and skin-to-skin contact. He really was clever and seemed to really like me and I really liked him. We've been inseparable since. I recently received a print of UK artist David Shrigley's artworks for my birthday, and it pretty much sums all this up because, well, my love for Nathan grew, as he did. Shrigley has painted an enormous cat in messy lime-green acrylic, the cat's body spilling round his little front paws, wonky eyes, next to a frank statement in big red text which goes: THIS HUGE CAT HAS BEEN ASSIGNED TO YOU / YOU MUST ACCEPT THIS SITUATION AND FIND JOY IN IT. Luke Beesley is a poet and singer-songwriter. His latest book is In the Photograph
The Guardian
43 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Grief has always been my companion: poetry taught me how to live with it
I have been well-acquainted with grief. As a Shiʿi Muslim, it permeates my religious consciousness and finds expression through annual mourning rituals. I find nourishment in mourning: from a young age I have lent my ears to lamentations and shed tears for martyrs felled in far-off lands. Recently though, grief, paid a more personal visit when news reached me of my grandmother's passing. In response, I turned to my favourite poem, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H., which ranks among the most profound and poignant elegies ever penned, in any language. Tennyson's words are a balm for the soul, but some passages caught my eye for a different reason: I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. I was taken aback, for Tennyson's words cast doubt on the effectiveness of poetry to deal with grief. It made me question whether the solace I sought in poetry was real, or merely a superficial remedy that lacked any substance. This spurred serious reflection on my part on the purpose of poetry in confronting grief, ably assisted by The Penguin Book of Elegy, which helped refine my thought process. I present some of these reflections below. All poetry is, in a sense, elegiac, as it attempts to preserve or recall that which has been, or will be, devoured by death. In wrestling with death, poetry attempts to distil the panorama of human experience into words, though it will inevitably fall short in describing the emotions and experiences of the poet. Tennyson alluded to this in the above excerpt when he wrote that words 'half conceal the Soul within'. That is only half the picture, though, for Tennyson also conceded that words 'half reveal'. It is in this tension that much of the beauty of poetry resides: it causes us to simultaneously hope and despair; urges us hold on and let go; and emboldens us to confront and flee from death. Poetry allows our hearts to hover in that mysterious realm that lies between life and death, to catch glimpses of our soul – for that part of us which yearns for something far greater than it. Words may not help us reach that which is beyond us, but they do help to reignite within us the innate desire to transcend ourselves. There is also something to be said for the role of poetry in transforming mourning from an individual into a communal experience. Poetry helps to unearth grief from one heart and plant it within the hearts of others; an individual pain is transformed into a shared sorrow. Words alone may not heal wounds, but I have found throughout my life that grief is easier to digest when it is shared. Tennyson's own poem is proof of this: millions of readers have resonated with his words and perhaps found a degree of comfort and consolation that escaped Tennyson himself. A lone, pained voice of grief can feel meek before the shadow of death, but a symphony of sorrow orchestrated by hearts in sync can help soothe the grief. Some may read this and think I've overstated the significance of poetry in dealing with grief. This may be true, but I think we often fail to realise that words are magic: that with the assortment of letters cobbled together to form meaning, the emotions and thoughts that meander in our minds and hearts can flutter towards the minds and hearts of others. When we grieve, we mourn the most precious things that we have lost. But poetry helps us to not only preserve them, but to transform them: in allowing loss to sing, that which we have lost becomes beautiful and sublime, alive in ways we can only half comprehend. Ali Hammoud is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. He is broadly interested in Shīʿīsm and Islamicate intellectual history. More of his writings can be found on his Substack page
