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Good Morning, I once went to a six nations game in Cardiff. I needed an extra ticket for a friend. But when I found someone with a spare they said they wanted it to go to a Welshman. ‘I am Welsh,’ I protested. ‘You don’t sound Welsh,’ he said. ‘But I am Welsh!’ ‘Where were you born then?’ ‘…I was born in Germany but…’ ‘Well there you are then!’ he said, before asking me where I lived. I admitted I lived in London but pointed out that I’d grown up in Tenby. ‘That’s not really Welsh is it?’ he said. ‘That’s Little England beyond Wales.’ He then warned the other touts not to sell me a ticket telling them: ‘This one’s English!’ ‘Aw, Come on!’ I said, my accent becoming more Welsh the more agitated I got, ‘I’ll name the entire Welsh squad for you. I can give you their weights.’ It’s an acid test of Welshness to be able to guess the weight of tight-head prop Adam Jones. But he’d already found a taker – a man dressed in red, with a proper Welsh accent. I got into the game with my friend and, happily, Wales beat England, but on the train home – to London – surrounded by subdued Englishmen, I had a sense of not belonging anywhere and I found myself wondering how Welsh I really was. I’d been born in a British military hospital in Germany. I’d grown up in Wales but gone to school and university in England. I’d lived in London for 30 years. Married a girl from Essex. I was a passionate Welsh rugby fan but I supported England at football. I had a Welsh first name but an English sounding surname. My siblings sounded Welsh to me. I sounded posh to them. Maybe I was a kind of ‘bidoon’ – a stateless person found in the Arab peninsula, the descendents of the nomadic Bedouin. Perhaps my nationality wasn’t defined by where I lived but by my attitudes, my loyalties, my beliefs. It was rubgy that gave me a sense of national awareness. Supporting Wales in the 70’s was a source of pride and self-confidence. And the awareness increased when I went to boarding school in England where I had something to define myself against. When I wrote home I’d print the address as: house, village, town, county, country, nation, continent, world, solar system and universe – underlining Wales in case it went missing. Maybe the God-like perspective is helpful on this issue of nationality. According to Isaiah the nations are ‘like a drop in a bucket to Him’ and ‘He counts the Isles as a very small thing.’ At various stages in time, The God of the Bible has revealed Himself to and through individuals, families, tribes and nations. But scripture also speaks of people belonging to a different kingdom. A state where there is no distinction between Greek or Roman, Jew or Gentile. And this is heartening news for the displaced and stateless bidoons of this world