Despite the mixed views on whether or not JRR Tolkien’s Mordor was inspired by the Black Country, it can be argued that there are parallels. As a child of the Black Country growing up on an ‘estate’, concrete and industry were, and still are, much more familiar than the famed Cymru hills and valleys that I have grown so connected to, as a prospective, not current ‘local’.
Where concrete shaped childhood
On Lion Farm, the estate where I grew up, more farm in name than in nature, our flora and fauna consisted of dandelions fighting through cracks in the paving, the local playing fields and playgrounds built from leftover construction pipes: an afterthought, wedged between tower blocks.
Unsurprisingly, water health and safety didn’t feature heavily in my lived experience beyond trying not to fall in ‘the cut’ (canal) and knowing which pieces of debris to trust your weight on if you did. A trip to the seaside was a very rare occurrence, and the first time I saw a river was on a Geography school trip in secondary school.
The wonder and the wound
As for water quality, the ‘Council pop’ that flowed from the taps was simply presumed clean. Whilst this urban landscape shielded my exposure to nature’s beauty, it also protected me from something else: the invisible harm being quietly done to it, and by extension to the people who depend on it. Two things unseen at once – the wonder and the wound.
When I started university in 2006, I was one of the ‘lucky’ ones to enrol just as the old fee-waiver system for low-income backgrounds was replaced by loans that everyone had to take. When I graduated, I chose to teach in the same kind of estate I’d grown up on.
Finding solace across the border
For now, the Black Country is still the place I call home, but the last two decades have found me drawn to the solace of nature more and more, and it was in Wales, more than anywhere else, that I found it. We’ve made four trips to Cymru so far this year alone, exploring Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, not just holidaying but learning about rich history, culture and identity – so much so that “Dw i’n trio dysgu siarad Cymraeg!”
It was some months after its release that I finally sat down and watched Dirty Business, Channel 4’s factual drama on the UK’s sewage scandal. I took the decision to step away from rolling news a number of years ago and much of the open water where I live is man-made – flooded collieries, constructed flood lakes and canals. Nature manufactured out of the same industrial landscape it once gave way to. Choice and circumstance combined, I’d missed the water scandal. It hit me sideways through drama, not headlines.
Once seen, never unseen
Knowledge is power, however sobering. I downloaded the Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) app, signed a petition and continued my research. As WWF found, in evidence submitted to Parliament by Swim England, half the public aren’t aware that raw sewage can be discharged into our waterways at all, let alone that it’s actively happening. But once they do know “80% think that it is never acceptable… and 87% think the public must be told”. Over the coming months, the algorithm continued to do its thing, bringing me regular social media posts about sewage discharges.
One last evening by the sea
Fast forward to our holiday, in a little cottage tucked between Tenby and Saundersfoot, roughly fifteen minutes from each. We filled the days with sand and exploration: Freshwater West (Dobby’s beach, to any Harry Potter fans), the Druidstone, the Tudor Merchant’s House in Tenby and Pembroke Castle to name but a few. Being a stone’s throw away, we often ended our day at Saundersfoot beach. My daughter and I made one last stop there the evening before travelling home – eking out every last drop of Cymru, for now.
It felt serene. We headed for the sea and paddled for a while before passing an abandoned sandcastle ringed with a few rocks. We added a few more, making a swift have-a-go dam, anticipating how long it would be before the tide muscled its way over and dissolved the structure. We walked further along the beach in the direction of Coppet Hall. The hiss-hush of the tide rolling in always makes me breathe a little deeper and slow my pace, anchored in the moment.
A shadow across the sand
I was struck by something I didn’t recognise but now know to be a culvert – with water running out onto the beach – children played and carved water channels into the sand at the outlet. This took me spiralling back to the tragic death of Heather Preen, which Dirty Business had brought to light. Closer to this home-from-home of mine – in time as well as distance – Caitlin Edwards suffered serious health complications a few miles away, at Amroth.
I calmly diverted up the beach and over the concrete structure, explaining that I wasn’t sure if the water was clean or dirty. Back at the shoreline the waves licked our feet as we walked and we happened upon two dinner-plate sized jellyfish gently bobbing at the water’s edge. Dead or alive I couldn’t say, but there was something uncanny about them drifting in on the same tide I was worried about. A wonder or a warning – nature’s beauty sharing the same stretch of sand.
We settled near the rocks and started a sandcastle when a little girl invited my daughter to play – bodyboard in hand. They ran for the water together and played at waist-height within sight, laughing and shrieking at the cold as they tumbled about. As I watched, I felt parenting give way to parenthood – there’s something remarkable in the joy of watching hers, a kind of childhood experienced twice over from a different seat.
When joy meets vigilance
My mind went back to the water outlet. Everyone else appeared untroubled in their enjoyment of the moment; I quickly checked the SAS app – no reported discharge. I weighed the uncertainty against the joy of the here and now, years of professional risk assessment quietly taking over. I opted to cap the time in the water rather than end it abruptly.
We travelled back to the Midlands the following day, and upon arriving home, my daughter alerted me to a rash covering her torso. They were itchy red spots with emerging yellow centres under the surface. I acted as I usually would, starting first with the glass test before working through other possibilities. I administered an antihistamine and monitored her overnight.
Answers that raised more questions
As they continued to develop, the resulting medical diagnosis was a 30-second visual check and confirmation of chickenpox. On hearing she’d been in the sea the day before, the clinician gave a second diagnostic opinion and sent me away with a prescription for antibiotics to treat a skin infection from the water. Given that my daughter had already had chickenpox, a second case would be unusual, but not impossible. Unsure which it was, I opted to treat both possibilities in parallel.
The follow-up appointment ruled chickenpox out and, short on time, I gave the GP a quick summary of everything we’d tried. “Are you a medic?” she asked. Still processing the question, I answered “yes” confirming I’d had it checked by one. When she said she could tell I was a clinician, I understood what she’d actually asked, and explained the misunderstanding. We both laughed at the crossed wires before the conversation turned to the new vigilance the water scandal demanded, parenting mistaken for vocation, just this once.
The price of knowing
Whilst I’ve since learned it was a culvert – nothing in that moment on the beach could have told me that. I’ll never know whether there’s causation between the water, the rash and the antibiotics. Learning of the water scandal weighs heavy. Has it changed our experiences of childhood and parenthood? I’d always rather know than not know, and I wouldn’t change it back.
SAS’s parliamentary evidence found that “bathers in the UK remain just as likely to become ill from seawater as they were in the 1990s” – a stark reflection on thirty years without progress. The risk hasn’t changed. Our awareness has – and awareness brings vigilance – pulling us out of the moment, quietly bursting the bubble, managing a danger the child in front of you doesn’t know exists. It both protects and snatches a little magic.
So alongside the millions owed in enforcement payments, is the erosion of an unguarded childhood yet another debt owed to the public?
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