Dylan Thomas Statue and Victoria Hopkins

The Dylan Thomas statue at the Marina outside is a good place to introduce Victoria Hopkins, the new SwanTV reporter and news reader.



Just across the Marina bridge is another statue, that of Captain Cat, a major character in Under Milk Wood, the play for words written by Dylan Thomas and one of the vivid memories I have in the days of Radio. I still enjoy listening to many programmes on radio and in particular the drama. You can use your imagination rather than depend on what you see when you watch TV. I can clearly remember listening to Under Milk Wood. The year must have been 1954 and the first recording presented by the BBC with  Richard Burton and I think I may have listened on a crystal set using a pair of ex-RAF headphones.

Crystal sets were a way of listening privately and I'd listen in bed. Radio Luxemburg was popular. The sets were often sold as kits for self assembly and I think mine was in a small cigar box.  Meanwhile the family listened in the drawing room to such programmes as Tony Hancock, Dick Barton, Ray's  Laugh and many others. Whilst we now sit around the TV we used to have the radio on  doing other things. Here is a photo of a crystal set from the early fifties. Now we have a single device that;s a phone, TV, radio and much more

Just to remind you, Captain Cat is the old blind sea captain who dreams of his deceased shipmates and lost lover Rosie Probert. He is one of the play's most important characters, as he often acts as a narrator. He observes and comments on the goings-on in the village from his window.

Sowing bulbs in Cwmdonkin Park

Short film shot last month.

Listening to Dylan Thomas reading is so relaxing. His voice is so clear and pitched to almost hypnotise. No wonder he was so successful on radio. When the BBC studios in Swansea were unusable programmes were recorded in Swansea Uplands. In a grove where Martin Amis grew up with his parents. Martin slept in an open draw in his parents bedroom. My mother in law lived next door and says she found these bohemians strange folk!!

Dylan lived in a nearby avenue. He died in 1953. Martin Amis as born in 1949 so they might as well have lived in different centuries.Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953)
Reading by Dylan Thomas

Love In the Asylum
A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas Walks re-instated

We are pleased to announce that the Dylan Thomas walks are being started again in this, the centenary year of the birth of the Great Man.
 
It is intended to run these as follows.
 
Until March 2014
Uplands Walk     1st & 3rd Saturdays each month at 11.30 outside the Uplands Tavern, Swansea
      
Literary Pub Crawl  1st & 3rd Wednesday each month 6.30 outside No Sign Wine Bar Wind Street, Swansea

Walks from April onwards to be announced.

Group walks can be arranged to suit you. Call 07976 364681

The Hunchback in the Park.

On the Uplands Walk we stop by the actual fountain that Dylan Thomas floated his tin boat in. Now refurbished it's looking good but the tin cup is missing.

We usually read verses from this poem and we soak up the atmosphere and imagine the Hunchback behind every tree as Dylan runs home in the twilight.

Painting By Jeff Phillips. Swansea illustrator with a huge Dylan Thomas collection

Under Milk Wood