One of the busiest men on the Eisteddfod Maes is the chairman of the Eisteddfod's organising committee.
As chairman Aled LLoyd Davies has overseen the organising of the festival but has still found time to script the nursery school pageant which is staged in the main pavilion tomorrow and rehearse with the Eisteddfod Choir for the concert on Tuesday evening.
He said: "I'm really looking forward to the concert. I'm a member along with my wife and it will be a wonderful occasion. I'm also looking forward to the cylchoedd meithrin show on Sunday morning. It was one of the most difficult things to do because I didn't really know where to pitch it but it's worked out really well.
"And I'm also looking forward to the Cerdd Dant duetlater in the week because the set piece is one I wrote quite sometime ago. Its nice the committee responsible for choosing the set pieces have deemed it worthy.
"The concert on Thusrday evening is one I'll be able to enjoy because we're nearing the end of the week and because its a tribute to the well-known tenor David Lloyd who hailed from Trelogan. Rhys Meirion, who is taking part in the concert, has shown a great interest in him as a singer and carried out a lot of research into him. And I have a personal family connection with the village and during my visits would often find David Lloyd walking the dog and he wold alsways stop and have a chat."
Aled, who admits to being a pensioner, has been to a great many Eisteddfodau. He said he has only missed two in the last 70 years.
"My first Eisteddfod was in 1937 when I lived in Brithdir. My father was the head of the village primary and he was keen to take me to the festival to meet R Williams Parry (a well known poet and Eisteddfod winner) who had been at the university in Bangor. I remember shaking hands with him.
"Later in the week I recall going to the top of a hillside whch overlooks what is now the A470 and watching the cars heading home after the evening concert. The lights of the cars shining in a long stream wasn't something we saw very often in those
days," he recalled.
After the war Aled was called up for National Service and a few weeks before his de-mob in 1953 was able to attend the Eisteddfod held that year in Rhyl.
"I remember the nostalgic chairman's speech by Emlyn Williams, the dramatist and actor from Berthengam. The Blue Ribband competition was won with an unforgettable performance of Schubert's Serenade by Richie Thomas from Penmachno. He wasn't going to sing the song at all until a final decision the day before and he told me he was rehearsing it as he went about his work.
"The Eisteddfod next visited Flintshire in 1969 when it was staged at Flint. That was remarkable for me because it was when Meibion Menlli won the Cerdd Dant party competition for the fifth time."
"In 1985, again at Rhyl, the huge humanitarian concert Dwylo dros y Mor (Hands across the sea) was held in the main pavilion and the Eisteddfod Choir ujndertook a performance of Handel's Messiah under the baton of Sir Charles Groves. When the Eisteddfod was last held here, in 1991, one of the main prize winners was Angharad Tomos who was arrested by the police the day before for takign part in a demonstration outside the Welsh Language Bard stand.
"Who knows which items or events will remain with us after this, the first National Eisteddfod's first visit to Flintshire during the twenty-first century?" he said.
