crying is a third space activity
In which the author, inspired by an open callout for writing for Cardiff Life magazine and a two hour train journey ahead of him, decided to write an article about his life in Cardiff.
Trying to find something to do without spending much money in Cardiff is difficult. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and I used to be a fairly successful arsonist. I often hear replies back to this telling me the park is free and I can wander around there as much as I like. This is true, and a wonderful day plan if you want to experience what it’s like having escaped from a care home or senselessly haunting the grounds of a castle like a rubbish ghost. When you have done the walk more than five times it turns into a mental tour of places your friends have told you they’ve had sex, presumed cruising spots, and occasionally wondering how many people are currently in bushes doing drugs and if they’d be opposed to me joining them.
Sometimes I want a space to sit on my laptop in a coffee shop, I’m aware this is taboo for some reason, I’m not entirely sure why. If I walked into a coffee shop with a friend, we bought a coffee each, and spoke for half an hour before leaving, it makes no difference to them if I stayed by myself for two hours and bought two coffees. I have, however, been told what I do is inconvenient and uses a disproportionate amount of electricity, and in their defence I think I ran over someones foot when I drove my car into the shop to charge it at one of the plugs, so they might have been a little annoyed. There are a handful of coffee shops that provide activities and reasons to stick around beyond just drinking coffee, Scaredy Cat Cafe have boardgames to choose from for free, or there’s Chance & Counters where for a small fee you can access board games that don’t seem like they’ve been ripped apart by angry dogs.
I am quite fond of escape rooms. I try not to put too much thought into why I enjoy paying money to be locked inside a room and can only escape with a sense of victory if I solve some puzzles. I suspect it’s a latent sex thing I haven’t got round to exploring yet. These can often be quite expensive but in the grand scheme of things they are a fairly cheap way of breaking up with a partner or cutting a friend off, I find they do it themselves after the ninth time I consecutively ask them if they are sure they’ve entered a code correctly.
Cardiff Museum is pretty spectacular. I’ve spent many hours plotting the best way to take one of the taxidermied animals in the prehistoric section home for totally normal reasons. They don’t mind if you sit in their cafe with some A3 paper and markers and draw an elaborate plan, but they do ask you to leave if you keep asking the staff at the front desk about blueprints. Their rolling exhibits are nice, I saw one a few years back that had a craft that had been into space, or the moon or something, I couldn’t quite remember, I had spent the afternoon googling how to clean taxidermied fur and I was quite tired.
Places like Geek Retreat are quite special, they are incredible spaces if you already have a thing. Great space to just play Warhammer, D&D, various trading card games. They aren’t great spaces if you don’t already have a thing. If you sit down on a table and try and plan a brand new museum heist game it may be seen as a slight waste of their table space. This isn’t true, realistically they’d probably love it, and demographically they’d also be the most keen to have a go on the taxidermied hyena.
There are a few entertainment bars that offer alcohol and bowling, karaoke, darts, etc, Roxy Lanes being the classiest of the establishments at least putting in the effort to paint the walls and floor. Boom Battle Bar is a fairly terrifying place to anyone over the age of 22, but I did once find a baggy of an unknown white powder in the bathroom floor and had to be convinced by my friends not to take it, so it’s got that going for it. The worst contender is Play at Pins, a place so devoid of joy they had considered burying the Queen there. They didn’t go for it, I think only because I was a little too insistent and wanted to rush it through quickly. She was also still alive at the time.
I spend most of my days now sitting at the top of fire escape stairwells in a variety of high rise hotels in the city centre for fun, looking out into the city imagining what it might be like to be really tall. You can charge your laptop there as well.
