‘Melangell’ (JP?) in a Pyrenean haven

This comment by ‘Melangell’ was posted on the Guardian thread on 02/08/2010…  (Ref. Jim Perrin’s false colours.)

‘When I visited Jim at his house in the Pyrenees last year…’ — it follows therefore that the year referred to was 2009.

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Siân Melangell Dafydd, we feel certain, was not party to this. We have explained in previous postings that we are aware of a young Welsh woman of that name who was involved with Jim Perrin (note her dedication below) and we would not wish to hurt her. It is our belief that Jim Perrin hi-jacked her name, as in our opinion he has done with others’. She is a sensitive and highly talented author and is renowned in the Welsh literary world for her poetry and prose and has received many honours for her work. Such a young woman would not — could not — have knowingly lent her name ‘Melangell’ to those disgraceful entries on the Guardian thread concerning our sister and her family; note the sequence, which begins on the 24/07/2010. In the context of our site, however, we feel it is now appropriate to quote details — and her own words — of the genuine Melangell.

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Siân Melangell Dafydd: ‘An author who picked up one of the main prizes of this year’s National Eisteddfod of Wales [2009] has been awarded an international literary scholarship worth more than £3,000. [Her book was entitled Y Trydydd Peth = ‘The Third Thing’] She will spend two residencies in two different European countries during 2010, as part of her scholarship…’

This award was in 2009 and if she took up the residencies she would have been out of the country for a considerable time in 2010, when the ‘Melangell’ comments were being posted on The Guardian thread, and the likelihood is that she had no idea at that time — if at all — of their existence. Clearly the author of the comments (who of course we are sure was Jim Perrin) was drawing on his recollections of the time that the ‘real’ Melangell was at his property in Ariège. ‘An announcement was made…  on Monday, 30th. November 2009’, and in her acceptance speech Siân Melangell Dafydd said that she had dedicated her book ‘to Jim Perrin, who provided…  a Pyrénéan haven in which to write.’

Is it possible — or likely — that an author could have devised, worked on, have had published, and won a prize in November 2009 for a book written in the same year? It may be so. But the indications are that Jim Perrin was himself in the French Pyrénées at some point in 2008. The first entry on the Guardian thread in which we felt sure that Jim Perrin posted using the alias ‘Melangell’ was 18/05/2010, and when it was stated in an interview in 2011 that he no longer lived in Wales he responded by saying ‘No. I’ve been away now some four years…’

We do realise he could have posted his comments from either France or Wales but in our view it displays his ability deliberately to conceal his actual whereabouts; given that we also have reliable information that he was living in Wales at some point in 2010; as we have said before: he flits to France, where he has a bolt-hole — to avoid the CSA.

Jac’s sisters.