Five Points for Noise, and the Chair to ‘The Teachers’

The day, Friday 27 February, in Llanrwst, by the numbers.

Twenty instrumental soloists in the preliminary round on the Thursday. Four on the day.

One competitor in the open recitation for Years 12 and 13, who won it, and also took the trophy for the best item in the recitation section. A clean sweep is much easier with a field of one.

Three minutes: the limit for the light-entertainment advertisements. Third place went to special dog food. Second went to an app for finding love. First went to a shampoo to make hair grow, starring the deputy head alongside Years 7 and 8, which is the kind of commitment no parents’ evening ever sees.

Half time: Gwydir 320, Geirionnydd 314, Crafnant 299, Hiraethog 252. The report announces this like a football results service, and it is right to.

Two entries for the Chair. The topic was Travel, judged by the poet Myrddin ap Dafydd. One entrant sent a poem, the other a collection of diaries. The poem won. It had been entered, as tradition requires, under a pseudonym, and the pseudonym was The Teachers.

For one glorious moment before the name was read out, the chair at Ysgol Dyffryn Conwy had been won by the staff. The poet was a Year 12 pupil, and the chair itself, a small one, had been made by Mr Gwyn Roberts.

That matters, the chair. The broadcaster Beti George remembers being a child on a bus to Llangrannog beach when her mother got talking to a man who had just won the chair at the National Eisteddfod. What the young Beti wanted to know was where the chair was. It is the right question. You cannot sit on a poem.

Final scores: Hiraethog 386, Crafnant 418, Gwydir 491, and Geirionnydd, up from second at half time, on 637, “leaping into poll position”.

On Saturday I tried the opening ceremony at home. Five points to whichever child could make the loudest noise.

Everybody was awake. So was next door. The points system has been suspended pending a review.