abstract from the slate

I live on the outskirts of Bangor, in a neighbourhood named Glanadda. It is built around Caernarfon Road, one of the main routes into and out of the city. Glanadda is a residential area bordered by several big box stores - Matalan, B&M, Go Outdoors, Aldi, and the just opened Food Warehouse, to name a few. A couple of minutes' drive away is the Tesco Superstore. The retail parks on Caernarfon Road have gradually replaced the hollowed out High Street as Bangor's shopping centre. If you live in Bangor or its surrounding villages and you need to buy something - providing you can't get it online - this is where you come. But if you require a more bespoke service, such as paying a bill, transferring money, or posting a parcel, then Caernarfon Road has nothing to offer you. These services are often crucial to communities, particularly for residents who can't drive, or who rely on consistent and familiar human assistance such as that you'd find at a post office branch. ...

A few weekends ago, my daughter was feeling a bit unwell. On the Saturday morning, we took her to see some highland cows on a nature reserve. She wasn't too interested and seemed a bit lethargic. Before dinner, I sat down with her and some Peppa Pig stickers I'd got the day before. We spent a good 10 minutes peeling them off and sticking them into a sketchbook. We talked about the characters, especially "Mummy Pig" and "Daddy Pig," and she used a word I hadn't heard her use before: "brella," while pointing to Peppa's umbrella. She got some of the smaller stickers caught on her thumbs and asked for help getting them off. "They're really sticky," I said. She lit up at this interaction between us, and her enjoyment of the stickers continued over the next few days. In the settings I've worked in as an Early Years teacher, a certain pedagogy has mostly held sway. Open-ended and well-built toys, often made from wood,...

Bangor and the surrounding parts of North Wales are noticeably less diverse than South Wales. There is less industry here and the region hasn't been as reshaped by overseas immigration as, say, Cardiff or Swansea. The major cultural change here has come from English migration, particularly in the last 50 years or so. I'm one of those migrants now, so my relationship to Bangor is understandably different to someone born here in North Wales. Coming from London, the lack of diversity here in Bangor is one of the big differences to life in a global megacity. But this is clearly changing. Bangor University and Ysbyty Gwynedd attract students and workers from all over the world, and many have brought their families with them or started families here. It's noticeable in some parts of the city, when walking past school gates at 3pm for example, just how diverse a population there is developing here. That said, Black history has been interlinked with the history of North Wales since...

When you live in London you are rarely called upon to think about the rest of the UK. There is little pressure to consider the connection between the land beneath your feet and the other cities or rural parts of this country. Unless your personal circumstances force you to confront it, it is very easy to float through life without care or concern for the non-metropolitan view of what it means to live in the United Kingdom. Moving to North Wales, I was suddenly required to confront the boundaries and limitations of the place that I inhabit. The city I now live in, Bangor, is inextricably a place within a wider place. It would not exist if not for the resources within the mountains bordering it, or for the wealth Britain extracted from its colonies via slavery. My experience of living in Bangor is defined by both the city's close proximity to the mountains of Eryri and its distance from London, as well as almost every other major city in the UK. Before I moved here, I had...