the land of my fathers... except, not, really... technically...

I'm Welsh.

I'd just like to get that out into the open.

Admittedly I was born in England in Robbie Williams/Denry Machin territory, but I've lived in Wales since I was about six months old and my grandparents had a Welsh collie called Glyn Bach, my GCSE certificates say WJEC on them, I swim in the Wales National Pool and I support Wales in the rugby. I've been specially commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition, and once last year I wrote several poems about dead sheep. As far as I'm concerned, that's Welsh.

Which is why when Wales SLAUGHTERED England at the rugby on Saturday, I had to spend £5 credit texting every English rugby fan I knew to basically say 'haha, gutted, England lost, you suck, we rock nyanyanya naaaaaaaaa'.

Replies were mixed. The Northerner, for example, replied in agreement, that England made some stupid, schoolboy errors. Sideburns-Earrings replied with a confusing:

'Hate 2 break it 2 u, but rugby doesn't matter...



howeva, u do. So how r u? x x x'

They both hid their heartbreak well.

I then went to tri training on Sunday night. When I ran into some of the club outside the sports centre, they were distinctly unimpressed by my red attire. We then discussed the rugby in detail at the poolside. The basic conversation went:

THEM: We were doing so well!

ME: Yeah, but you messed up in the second half...

THEM: No!

ME: Yeah!

THEM: NO!

Etc.

What with it being the time of the Six Nations and all that, I've sort of been pondering nationalities and this thing of whether or not you can really take pride in where you come from anymore, or even if you're allowed to. I mean, waving an English flag in our present social climate is pretty much the same as waving an advert for the BNP or UKIP.

In England, if you walk down the street in a Welsh rugby shirt, you get a bottle of water thrown at you from the window of a white van. Yep, that happened to me today. We never talk about the White Van Incident.

My friend Charly doesn't really approve of national pride, on account of the fact that you can't really choose where your born or what nation you belong to. Or what nation belongs to you. Either way, I have to disagree...

I really love loving where I come from, and, moreover, I really love other people who love where they come from. I don't mean that you necessarily have to love your leaders and your government or any of that stuff, but I mean that it ought to make us feel good seeing our nation thrash another nation at the rugby and it should make us feel good when Nicole Cooke wins the Tour or Joe Calzaghe wins a match.

Last year on St David's Day, I saw The Storys play at the Swansea Grand - genuinely, the Welshest spectacle of my entire life. There were daffodils and cuddly dragons on stage, the first support act, This River, played Calon Lan, The Storys themselves played Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau as their encore... it was brilliant. I mean, as a gig it went on a bit, but it was a brilliant atmosphere, to have this big band from the area come back and play with littler (but FANTASTIC) bands from around the place... it was the perfect way to spend St David's Day. Fact.

Also, at college a couple of years ago we got filed into the hall the week before the Six Nations started to sing the national anthem. We were given a little book of 'Traditional Welsh Songs' which included Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, Calon Lan, Sospan Fach and, most peculiarly, Delilah.

But, anyway, what I mean is that it's great to embrace the weird little oddities of your home. I'm terribly homesick at the moment and it's making me more Welsh than ever before. It's only miles away in England, staring at pages and pages of English books about English that I'm realising how much I regret not actually being able to speak Welsh. Or at least, not properly. I'm now determined that after I finish uni, I'm going straight back home to the Graveyard of Ambition, where I intend to go back to college and learn Welsh, properly. I then never intend to leave Swansea again.

The thing about Swansea... it's only in that daft little town that a dual carriageway could ever be given the name of 'Sketty Lane'. Only there that a school could be called 'Olchfa' which, as we all know, translates to 'washing place'. Only Swansea serves Joe's Ice Cream. Swansea may be an ugly, lovely town and/or a pretty shitty city (depending on whether you listen to Dylan Thomas or the 'bent coppers' of Twin Town), but it has a personality.

Add to that a Wales rugby win, AT TWICKENHAM... Well. Move over, England.

(Photo: BBC News)