From Kathmandu to Crickhowell

“Where’re you from?”
The young waiter in the Bear hotel, a fashionable 16th century former coaching inn, in Crickhowell, smiles.
 
“Guess.”
 
A few days earlier we had been served by an Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish and Fillipino.
 
“ How about the Far East…maybe the Philippines.”
 
He shakes his head.
 
“Nepal”
 
Now that did surprise me.
 
“How did you come to be in Crickhowell?”
 
“My father was a Ghurkha,” he said. “ He had a  friend  who knew the area and suggested it. I’ve  been here 14 years.”
 
Anup Gurung comes from a city close to Kathmandu, one not affected by the earthquake.
 
Every time I return to Wales I am struck by the vast number of foreign workers doing jobs which few British people would want and it raises the question: what happens to them after Brexit?  Are they all going to be sent home? So who will do their jobs?
 
And all these workers without exception are hardworking with great social skills.
 
Meanwhile the gentrification of Crickhowell continues with rocketing property prices and this is reflected in the local shops and stores too who find themselves having to cater for a very different clientele.
 
The former local hardware store, Nicholls, looks like an outpost of Harrods.
 
Now we have begin the long trek back to Scotland and Craig-y-nos castle with its secret history of the lost children begins to fade again into the mists of time.
 

The next time I am confronted with my past will be a digital version when the film is shown at Stirling University.