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A Winter 2008 Eavesdrop in Caer Llwyd

The grey felt flaps of my warm winter hat keep the cold off my ears as I coast down the hill on my trusty bike, swerving to avoid coffee-holding road-crossers on their way to work. I take a sharp left before the traffic lights and come quickly to a halt at the slope that leads down into the car park under the building. I swipe my card and the iron bars of the gate begin to part with a clang. At that moment a vision comes into my mind’s eye: I see a parallel world where my bike has become a horse, my grey winter hat is a helmet, and the gate is a drawbridge opening to allow me to ride on into some great Arthurian castle. Before entering, I look up to see the golden morning Sun on the bricks of the building, and the walls appear to me suddenly the romantic old battlements of some legendary caer.

This vision gives me a feeling of hilarity – how absurd, what lunacy in the juxtaposition. The term Quixotic was never more applicable, for here I was seeing my everyday world as if it was part of some chivalric romance – this being exactly what Don Quixote did. But my mind begins to dwell upon other developments of this analogy.

In this job I am working in Customer Service for the Credit Card Department of a bank. The credit card is an invention of the Knights Templar. Honestly – look it up on Wikipedia. The Templars set themselves up as a mixture of travel agents, body guards and bankers, allowing pilgrims greater safety on their travels to the "Holy Land", including not having to carry cash.

I’m not going to say anything libellous or give out any confidential information about my job, so I may as well tell you that the bank in question is Lloyds. This name in turn reminded me of one specific old Welsh story, from the Saga of the Royal Welsh in the Mabinogion. Prince Pryderi, the son of Pwyll and Rhiannon, follows a white boar and then comes to the gates of a castle, which he enters. We learn later that the castle is called Caer Llwyd.

Once inside, Pryderi sees a golden vessel, and he goes forward to touch it, but when he does so, he gets stuck. His friend and step-father Manawyddan waits outside for him to return, but when he doesn’t come out, Manawyddan returns to tell Rhiannon. More bravely but more rashly, Rhiannon goes back to the place and goes into the castle, sees Pryderi frozen there touching the vessel, but she too touches it and the same happens to her. We later hear that while in this castle Pryderi and Rhiannon are made to do menial tasks.

Again, I could see a Quixotic parallel. After all, I would prefer to be a rich prince living in the lap of luxury than stuck in the role of a Customer Service Advisor getting up every morning and going to work in an office. One of the highlights of the job, though, is that one does get the opportunity from time to time to listen in to other calls – Eavesdropping of the first order. The other day I listened in to a call where the advisor – let us call him Edward – had to deal with the whimsical mental vacillations of an Irishman who we shall call Mr Mullen.  

“Is this query to do with your credit card?”

“Yes.”

“Can I take the number?”

“Yes, it’s xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx.”

“Thank-you.”

“We’re wondering if a refund has come in to our account from xxxxxxxxxxxxx for £xx.xx.”

“Yes, I can see that; they’ve credited your card.”

“Do you want the account number?”

“Sorry?”

“Do you want to take our bank account number?”

“I’ve got the credit card number.”

“But we want to see if the money has come back into our account.”

“You mean into the credit card?”

“Sorry?”

“You used the credit card to pay for this, didn’t you Mr Mullen.”
“Oh no, we’ve never had a credit card.”

“!!,” says the expression on Edward’s face. “Mr Mullen! You told me you used the credit card, and you gave me the number, and I can see the date you did the transaction.”

“What? Oh yes, of course. So when is the money going back into our account?”

“But Mr Mullen, it was never in your bank account. It was money borrowed on the credit card.”

“The credit card?”

“Yes.”

“So what should we do if the money doesn’t come back?”

“It’s already come back, Mr Mullen. They’ve re-credited your card.”

“How do we get that back into our current account?”

“It was never there, Mr Mullen!”

...at which point it all gets just a bit too excruciating, so we shall leave Edward and Mr Mullen to it, and return to the musings of this strange Quixotic parallel.

Manawyddan, the brother of former King Bran and their sister Branwen, doesn’t fair too much better than his step son and wife. He sets up a farm and sows some wheat, but for a number nights in a row around harvest time large amounts of the corn are stolen. He stays up to watch and discovers that the culprits are a group of mice. He chases them, and catches the largest, slowest one, as it seems to be pregnant. We are given to understand that he knows some enchantment is involved, because he threatens to hang this mouse. His suspicions turn out to be correct, and eventually Llwyd comes and tells all. The mouse is his pregnant wife and the other mice are her ladies. This is Llwyd, owner of the castle, Caer Llwyd, where Pryderi and Rhiannon got trapped. It turns out that all this could have been avoided if Pryderi’s father Pwyll had required more assurances from Llwyd’s friend Gwawl.

You see, Gwawl had tricked Pwyll into giving up the hand of his lover and fiancé to him, namely that of Rhiannon. Pwyll countered with another trick that involved a magic bag. Pwyll, disguised as a beggar, asked Gwawl if he could simply be allowed to fill the bag with meat, but however much was put in, and rather like someone whose overlimit charges, interest and insurance combine so as to exceed their minimum payment direct debit, the bag never became full. Eventually Pwyll was able to bargain back the hand of his lover, Rhiannon. Rhiannon’s father drew up a list of other assurances that Gwawl was required to give to Pwyll, but, the story tells us, Pwyll didn’t take a look at that list, trusting simply that they must be ok.

That all happened way back when. But returning to the later events, with Manawyddan and Llwyd, Llywd now admits that the assurances given to Pwyll by Gwawl did not include one preventing these later acts, the mice taking the corn, Pryderri and Rhiannon trapped in menial jobs in the castle. Pwyll, in other words, should have read the small print; he should have gone through the Terms and Conditions with a fine tooth comb.

Manawyddan is determined not to make the same mistake. He will not return the mouse to Llwyd until every i is dotted and every t is crossed, with complete assurances that no more actions can be taken against him or Pwyll’s children, or ex-wife, or anyone else in the clan. Suddenly the enchantment ends, the land becomes fruitful again, and Pryderi and Rhiannon are freed from Caer Llwyd, and everyone has learned a useful lesson – READ THE T’s&C’s!

That’s all I’m saying.