IN the years I’ve been writing about Aberystwyth I’ve received a steady stream of letters from people with ideas for novels that sound remarkably similar to mine – with the difference that they are set in a different Welsh town, writes author Malcolm Pryce. I have to tell them, sadly, they don’t work.

Why? I’m not sure. There is just something about Aberystwyth, but no-one is quite sure what it is.

For a start, when you tell strangers you are from the town, they quite often laugh. Or they look at you in wonder and say, “No! Really?”

Have you noticed how everyone seems to have heard of the place? Far more than is decent for a town of such modest size.

Even on the upper reaches of the Rajang river in Borneo I met tribal elders who nodded their heads with approval when I mentioned the town. “Oh, yes,” they said, “and how is Constitution Hill?”

In fact, I’ve never been anywhere yet where I didn’t meet at least one person who knew of the town. Although, I admit, I have never been to Antarctica.

I once set up a Google alert which sent me an email every time Aberystwyth appeared in the news. I had to switch it off because there were about 50 news items mentioning the town every day.

There is a sort of left-field oddness about Aberystwyth that we recognise but struggle to define. For the past 15 years I have been trying to capture it in fiction. It’s not something you can get at by frontal assault, you have to do it obliquely through metaphor and poetry. Or at least, that’s my excuse.

You can imagine how pleased I was, then, to be approached a few years ago by a theatre group who suggested we could capture it on the stage.

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