In Milkwater

Back from another week in Wales; this time at Laugharne, the home of Dylan Thomas. In fact we were living right above his boathouse, actually in Milkwood. Since Dylan's day the wood has been developed into a resort park and we had one of the huts they've put in there. I suppose it's better to describe it as a cabin but others might think of it as a chalet while the brochure describes it as a lodge. The locals call the older lodges Tenko's after the Jap prison drama.

Of course being in Laugharne you've got to do the Dylan Thomas trail, his boathouse and the seven pubs he drank in. We did the boathouse first and charming it was so went to sign the visitors book and this entry caught my eye -

Name - Gavin Roberts, Nationality - Welsh, Address - The Hendy Takeaway, Whitland

Comment - It's tidy.

The next part of the trail was more convivial, it's nice when you can combine culture with pleasure. Of course we went to Browns Hotel which was his favourite haunt and is now something of a shrine to his memory.

Because of legal and copywrite stuff let's just say I may have been sitting on a sofa in Brown's and that my comb may have slipped out of my pocket. I might also have searched down the back of the sofa and might have found an old sheet of paper.

It seems Dylan might have had another character for Under Milkwood but didn't use him. The character sketched out is Mucky Morgan and he first appears in the bible black night with the dreaming townsfolk.

Mucky Morgan sleeps in the same bed has slept in the past forty five years, Model plane in the corner, Boys Own annuals on the shelves and clothes in neat pile on the chair. He hears his mother's voice shrill as a gull -

Da, come here. He's been looking at mucky pictures again. Cane it out of him Da.

Morgan hears no more, listens through the paper thin walls to his parent's room and hears only the long deep fathomless silence. And murmurs -

There's no one left to cane me now.

Later at the bread shop the women talk, pecking at the titbits of the day -

My Gwen came home and said she'd lost her knickers but found a shilling. I gave her what for; you've seen that Mr Morgan I said. He's a mucky man and you stay away from him. It shouldn't be allowed.

I said wipe that smile off your face girl. A shilling, the cheek of it; he gave Mrs Prosser's eldest one and sixpence for hers.

And she's such a plain girl. It shouldn't be allowed.

In the evening Morgan is mentioned again, burrowing badger like with Red Indian cunning and ferret stealth though the wind tossed, sea tossed under growth to watch Mr Waldo and Polly Garter. He giggles to himself -

I shall be caned for this.

we'll never know.

Apart that nothing else happened in Laugharne so it hasn't changed much except that each evening Dylan's statue is given a fag and a beer.

Paul