Robert Lloyd - a Sir Gar Blog of random news . . . and some Clecs!

THERE’s a special Spring Concert being planned for the end of the month in Llanelli. It will feature Cor Meibion Elli male voice choir and will be held on Saturday, March 29, at the town centre Parish Church of St Elli at 7pm. Meibion Elli will be under the baton of celebrated musical director Eifion Thomas, with accompaniment by Aled Maddock. The choir will be supported by some young up-and-coming artists, including Betsan Daniel, who is studying at Ysgol y Strade, Llanelli. Betsan is a new recruit to Loud Applause Rising Stars (LARS), the Llanelli-based charity which works to mentor and develop young musical talent in south Wales. Other new recruits to LARS include Nia Card (Kenfig Hill), Hannah Edwards (Cardiff), Jasper Hollett (Gower), Scott Holmes (Port Talbot), Connor Horton (Carmarthen), Max Morris (Cilgerran)) and Ela Mai Williams (Penarth). Tickets for the Parish Church concert are £10 and are available from Llanelly House or from Hywel Houghton-Jones on 07826 930 396 or at th...

IF you’ve been sitting up and paying attention, then you’ll appreciate that it is the Richard Burton 100 - a celebration of the birth of the internationally-renowned actor and ‘the voice of Wales’. During the year, there are a whole series of events, with the action stepping up a gear next week with the release of the new film called Mr Burton. Fortunately, I have something of an inside track on information about the celebrations as one of my pals is Griff Harries, a chap with more strings to his bow than many Olympic archers. Griff is delivering a programme of Richard Burton Centenary Tours, which will be running until the end of the year. Griff’s CV runs from musician, performer, lecturer, broadcaster, educator and arts administrator, with the most recent string to his bow being as a Green Badge Wales Tourist Guide. Between stints on the SA Radio Live station, the former Swansea Sound broadcaster was able to explain more about Richard Burton 100 - “The film Mr Burton is about to be r...

LLANELLI’S parish church will host a performance of John Stainer’s oratorio The Crucifixion during Holy Week. Llanelli Chamber Choir, under the musical direction of Piet Zorn, will perform the oratorio at St Elli Church on Saturday, April 19 (7pm). The soloists will be tenor Tomos Owen Jones and baritone Liam J Edwards. The choir will be accompanied by a string ensemble: violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The musicians will be Mihai Stoican and Aden Yip (violin), Imogen Holborn (viola), James McBeth (cello) and Telmo Martins (double bass). Tickets are £12 and are available from 07535 166956, the email address  chamberchoirllanelli@gmail.com , or from any choir or St Elli parish church member. There’s a first class evening of musical entertainment planned for Pontyberem Memorial Hall, on Thursday, April 3 (7.30pm). Sinfonia Cymru are presenting the Golden Age of the Harp, featuring former Royal Harpist and Classic FM Rising Star Alis Huws. The evening is being billed as ‘a conce...

 HAVE a think: how many of your old classmates have ended up being featured on Desert Island Discs? And . . . if you could go back in time, would you have put money on them being featured on the classic Radio 4 show? OK, I guess if you went to the old Dynevor School in Swansea you might have had a decent punt on Rowan Williams fulfilling his destiny and being featured on the show as Archbishop of Canterbury. But most of us will have looked around and wondered where our fellow students would end up. It was something of a privilege (hard won through the old 11-plus exam, by the way) to attend the old Queen Elizabeth Grammar School for Boys in Carmarthen. The Queen Elizabeth, for those of you who don’t know the history, refers to Queen Elizabeth the First, rather than the Second. The clue is in the fact the school was founded in 1576. If you are a fan of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, you will get an idea of what sort of a school it was - as close as you can get to a ‘public school’ as it is...

STUDENTS of rock music will be familiar with Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s 1970s hit You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. You can start humming the tune if you like; it may come to be the theme music to the changes afoot in the Welsh Senedd (Parliament). In the political world (where nothing is certain), one thing is certain - the Welsh Senedd of 2026 will be substantially different to what it is today. You’ll start to notice the changes next month, when work starts to kit out the Senedd chamber for an additional 36 new members. Did we ask for 96 Senedd members?  I can’t remember submitting a request. How much is it all going to cost? Er . . . we don’t really know. The last bit seems reasonably important as the most recent bits of mail dropping through the letterbox here at Lloyd HQ have been about coughing up more money. County council tax increases, water bills up by 20 per cent, energy bills still heading north . . . even our local community council decided on a 30 per cent increase in its ...

PERHAPS you must be of a certain age? Perhaps you must be a fan of innuendo? Perhaps you have to shun all forms of political correctness? But . . . if I throw a few film quotes at you, it won’t take you long to guess the franchise. For example –  ‘Infamy, infamy! They've all got it infamy!’ ‘I’m Camembert! I’m the big cheese!’ ‘Matron, take them away!’ “You’ve stood on my Indian dress”. “Sari”. “Don’t mention it”. If you guessed the Carry On films, then award yourself a gold star. A total of 31 Carry On films were produced between 1958 and 1992. For many, there’s a Marmite Factor – you either love them or hate them. Kidwelly author Dave Ainsworth is in the ‘love them’ club. He’s just released a new book called When The Carry On Stopped. It puts the spotlight on a little-known but important period of Carry On history. It’s a critical study of the interplay between the well-known Carry On actors during a three-year period. It reveals the truth behind an acrimonious move from film com...

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that an elderly man in possession of a mobile phone will get himself into deep trouble. Jane Austen never had trouble with predictive text and baffling text abbreviations when she was writing Pride and Prejudice. And I hate to think how her masterpiece would have turned out if she’d had the ‘help’ of Artificial Intelligence (AI). At my senior age, I’m hoping someone invents a mobile phone that just does voice calls and allows for a spellchecker that stops me making stupid mistakes in messages. The tech giant Apple updated my phone with AI this week. Did I ask for it? No. Will it help me? I have no idea. It’s a fair bet that my three-year-old grand-daughter will have a better idea of how it all works. Meanwhile, I am saddled with a phone which bleeps six times an hour with ‘notifications’ and which still doesn’t stop me from putting a totally inappropriate ‘x’ at the end of messages to my plumber! There is, of course, some comfort to be taken in t...

  SOME of you may suspect this already . . . but today will confirm it as fact. This column is going to the dogs. Take a deep breath there. Trust me, it’s not a case of a lack of quality. It’s just that the spotlight is falling on this week’s announcement in The Senedd (Welsh Parliament) that Wales will soon become the first nation in the UK to ban greyhound racing. At the risk of offending some dear readers, I will try and give my verdict on the ban in what can be described as ‘short form’ and ‘long form’. Short form first – It’s bonkers. Long form next – It’s bat-poo bonkers . . . and I’ll explain why. Call me old-fashioned, but many (probably misguided) folk in Wales have been living under the assumption that the 60 members we elected to The Senedd would concentrate on the important things in Welsh life. You know the sort of thing . . . fixing the Welsh NHS and (er) giving us an education service which is the envy of the world, to name just two issues which are important to the ...

 WORLD exclusive coming up. Just remember you read it here first! Yes, it’s a ‘No’ from me. After lengthy deliberation (Mrs L timed it at just under 30 seconds), I will not be applying for the position of head coach with the Wales rugby team. True, I may not be qualified for the role. The sum total of my rugby experience (as a player, not a spectator) can be traced on the back of a beermat – sponge bag holder for Llanelli Wanderers Under-11s (unpaid) and record-breaking winger for Nantgaredig RFC in the old Llanelli and District League (the record being Least Number Of Tries Scored By A Winger In A Season – ie one!). Having said that, the lack of a lengthy rugby career should not be a bar to achievement in the Welsh Rugby Union. Just being a fan should be enough, as WRU chief executive Abi Tierney continues to prove. And (as Mrs L pointed out before I came to my decision) the money is good. Departing Welsh coach Warren Gatland was reportedly on more than £600,000 a year. Not bad wh...

 GO on, I dare you! Ask me how I write this weekly column. To begin, I usually invert the Thomas Edison quotation – “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” Not being in the genius category, my usual tactic is to rely on 99 percent inspiration and one percent perspiration – economy of effort being a highly-valued ability at my senior age. The neatest trick for that Thursday morning moment when I come to sit down before that blank page of digital ‘paper’ is to get others to write the column for me. Some folk (no names mentioned!) have ventured down the road of getting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to scribble their words, but I have a more trusted and valued resource to draw on – reader feedback. Yes, the one thing guaranteed to cheer me up on a Friday morning is getting messages, emails, phone calls and stop-in-the-street chats about the latest weekly column. For one thing, it provides welcome reassurance that loyal members of ‘Club Evening Post’ still read w...

TO state the blinking obvious, it’s not so much a mid-life crisis as a spot of ‘old-life’ bother. This week saw something of a landmark birthday. I’ve had my lovely letter from the taxman at HMRC and my state pension is kicking in. As I clutched a small dry (cooking) sherry to celebrate the occasion, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’m turning into something of a penny-pincher. The warning signs are there already – a habit (bordering on OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder) of switching off lights and electrical appliances when they are not needed, and an evening routine of cwtshing up under a rug (in preference to putting the central heating on!). Call it thrift, call it being a Scrooge. Or call it being a miser, tightwad, cheapskate or a penny-pincher. Truth is, I’m now worried that I’m turning into the sort of person I used to laugh at during my younger days. Bit by bit, I’m becoming obsessed with seeking out bargains. The Head of the Household, aka Mrs Lloyd, is convinced it started wh...

  HERE’S a question guaranteed to divide all sports fans out there: who are the ‘toughest’ competitors in the world? Rugby Union players? Rugby League stars? Tour de France cyclists? Olympic rowers? Marathon runners? Boxers? In nearly 50 years of watching and reporting on different sports, I’ve met and interviewed people from all the above sports. In terms of being the ‘toughest’, none of them come close to National Hunt jockeys. Evidence that they are as tough as teak is provided daily on racecourses around the UK – with the latest example happening at our local Ffos Las track last Saturday. Pembrokeshire’s James Bowen, who comes from a family of fearless horsemen, was the latest jockey to reflect that one second you can be sailing over a hurdle or fence at 35mph, and the next you can be face down in the mud wondering how you’ve narrowly escaped death. Bowen is part of a long line of Welsh jockeys who have diced with death while competing at the highest level in racing. When I was...