Ghost Town of Mine | Reflections on Llanelli
Joshua Jones reflects on changes in the town of Llanelli, asking what “home” really means and whether nostalgia must always be melancholic.
Both mourning and melancholia are about loss. Haunting, then, can be construed as a failed mourning[i]. I mourn for my hometown, continue to feel haunted by its spectre, a particular kind of grieving not unknown to anyone whose left home for education and opportunity, who have felt failed by the lack of funding and opportunities, and the feeling of abandonment under Britain’s Conservative state. How are you supposed to feel ‘seen’ by a government considered (or expected) to be all-seeing, that doesn’t see you? Every time it blinks a person falls through the cracks in the pavement.
Home for me, or least one of the definitions of home, is Llanelli. The largest town in Carmarthenshire and just ten miles from the nearest city, Swansea, it was once a thriving trading port, and later known for its tinplate industry — and churches, of which there are over 40, at least, and many of them in various stages of disintegration.
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