Gland III. West Wales

Part III. West Wales

The great mystery about the most lethal strand, Type C glandular fever is that precisely one in every twenty-five thousand people are immune. Science cannot explain why and, in truth, science is not particularly interested. Once a condition is defined as incurable I suppose it’s not too surprising that research funding tends to fall away.

In Bromaen Mawr, West Wales, a community of survivors are thriving. There are just fifteen members: ‘ten big people and five small people,’ to use the phrase of Geraint Watkins, their unofficial leader. I get a chance to chat to Geraint – a milk-skinned Welshmen with a droopy fringe and dark, dilated eyes – over a traditional Welsh breakfast: fried seaweed with a poached hen’s egg.

“In this community,” he explains, “we all work towards keeping things going, doing whatever we can: there’s no room for being a teenager here.” My immediate assumption is that Geraint is a socialist or, worse, a hippy. I ask if the community has a manifesto. Geraint nods.

“I can see why you’d think that,” he says. “But what seems like a political statement is actually just the result of very limited options.”

As Geraint sees it, once GF had wiped out the vast majority of the population, and the aid agencies dropped in, the survivors were faced with few choices: “Do we want to live in a crumbling city, surrounded by the dead and dying? No.”

He counts out the questions on his fingers.

“Do we want to spend the rest of our lives being fed and clothed by the Red Cross? No. Do we want to become refugees, shipped off to some semi-oxygenated moon, sleeping in perma-tents along with the rest of the galaxy’s displaced, orphaned and lost? No. Do we want to say goodbye to our heritage, our bloodline? No. It’s simple.”

With only a small knowledge base between them, the ‘veterans’ have created a self-sufficient community, based on the principles of perma-culture, geo-thermal sourcing and good ol’ fashioned graft. Three of the five small people were born in Bromaen.

If I’m being cynical I imagine Geraint as the poster-person for the resurgence of ‘down-market’ living. I can see him on a giant IKEA poster, with his spade in the dirt, digging his own shit-pit, standing next to a self-assembling outhouse unit.

Last week, I talked about the Buckingham Palace memorial. Bromaen has its own, more direct tribute: an enormous fallen tree acts as a bridge over the weir that runs behind the cottage; the words twenty four thousand nine hundred and ninety nine have been carved into its bark.

Now, I can see that this might seem in bad taste, or a bit self-righteous, to some, but I found this tribute very moving: as much a statement of loss as it is of celebration. These sorts of contradictions are inherent to life here. This is a community of orphans, but it is also a group of people saved by a mysterious, unexplained fortune. They are living a plotline from science fiction: a group of strangers, survivors, chosen by fate, step out of the rubble of a ruined empire as the sole representatives of the human race.

In reality, there are several thousand communities like Bromaen Mawr scattered across England, America and parts of Western Europe. The Red Cross estimates that the total remaining uninfected population of earth is just under fifty thousand.

The community’s heart is Bromaen Cottage, a beautiful stone-walled building surrounded by six acres of farmland. It sleeps eight. The others sleep in two giant tepees in the back garden.

They have a constant battle with the fungus for ground. Every day, hours are spent on hacking and plucking, vacuuming spores and generally pushing the fungaline back, creating more space for a clutch of hens, sheep and highland cows.

With such a small community, I ask Geraint if he is worried about the size of the gene pool. At this point, Geraint looks a bit weary. He squints. “We are not self-destructive,” he says. “And our community is not entirely out of contact.” It takes him a while but, when he speaks, I am surprised to hear him using the most up to date aid-jargon. “The Red Cross has supported us in purchasing our own screening unit. Within hours of a confirmed gestation, the gamete is scanned for defects. If it’s clean, we keep it. So far, we’ve had an excellent success rate.”

I sense that Geraint is not quite so naïve about his politics as he’d have me believe. So this is not utopia. But, whether, they mean it or not, it makes a bold statement as a new type of small-scale isolated society. With the news that Arnold Moi has bought Saturn’s largest moon for work/live (in that order) apartments, we are starting to realise that we live in a large universe – and no where is out of bounds. We need no longer be crammed in together. Travel and commercial deliveries have never been faster and cheaper. Cities were born through necessity – but now that imperative no longer exists. So we are left to try and remember whether we actually enjoy living on top of each other, or is it just something we’ve grown accustomed to? Something we’ve glamorised to make ourselves feel better?

One thing I do know, even small communities like to party. The evening before we are set to leave, a huge, apocalyptic bonfire is set up in the back field, the smell of roasting mushroom fills the air, and we dance and sing like we are the last men and women alive.

Pim Tandor will be reporting from Britain for the next three weeks. Next week: Edinburgh. Flights to Ely, England run once a week from Aio and twice monthly from Lis. A guide is essential and can be arranged in advance.