AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the previous episode, Sunny Quito seems familiar to The Librarian; a news team barges into the CIA.

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 10

It all made perfect sense. Wales had a long and noble mining tradition. While building up the economy they would be cementing national pride at the same time. Just below all the grass and trees that still covered large parts of the countryside – especially the rural areas where the countryside was particularly prevalent – was a vast, and so far untapped resource: Soil.

Once the scheme was under way, Land was being mined in vast quantities. And so it was that in a few short months, Wales went from having a struggling economic base to being the world’s second largest exporter of soil and becoming a significant European nation. The fiscal wonder that was Land mining shot Wales to international fame. It made the covers of NewsWeak, The Econo-missed and Soil! magazines in successive weeks. The rich and stupid (both together and separately) were queuing up for a piece of the sod action. Dia Llaffaen, the newly appointed minister at the newly created Department of Land Reassignment (humorously dubbed the ‘ministry of mud’ by the tabloid wags on the Llanharri Sun), became an overnight celebrity. He made regular TV and radio appearances to update the public, and the shareholders, on the current state of soil exports.

And the exports? The docks in Swansea, Cardiff and Bridgend had never been so busy. (Traditionally Bridgend had been several miles from the coasts but before long so much soil had been exported that turning the town into a saltwater port was merely a formality. The significance of this point went largely unnoticed, such was he nationwide enthrallment with the incredible state of the economy.). With the rise in global sea levels and increasing coastal erosion there was a good supply of demand for premium Welsh soil. Land was being reassigned at a incredible rate. The knock on effects of the soil trade were huge. Those not directly employed as miners, shovellers or packers tended to have jobs making mining equipment, shovels or packaging, or they found work driving for haulage firms, building ships or working as cartographers.

The most obvious place to begin land mining was the old English border. The political and nationalist significance was not lost on anyone. What better way to mark the country’s break from England than by literally separating the two? Before long their English neighbors were left to stare through the razor wire fence and contemplate a vast, cavernous trench and watch as lorry after lorry headed off over the horizon with yet another 40 tonnes of mud.

In no time at all Land mines were springing down all over the place. The whole nation benefited, many people became personally very wealthy and the few (mostly) men who had come up with the original idea had become obscenely rich. Rich beyond their wildest nightmares.

Things were going well – all, it seemed, was good in Wales. There were always a few who’d pop up from time to time and claim “it’ll never last”, but on the whole they were not a big problem. They were either ignored or shot (or, in a few exceptional cases, both) and so nobody had to deal with the particularly crazy version of the truth that such realistic persons were pedaling like so many bikes, and everybody was free to continue basking in the reborn national pride.