Hands deeply pocketed, a stone is kicked, to make it dance and skip along the path.
Only to divert to the edge of the dock where, with a plop, it sinks, swaying as it sinks and dances it’s last dance and invisibly, it slips away to the deep.
The marina is quiet this time of the morning, before the melange of students, workers, runners and walkers wake to greet the new day.
As I turn up Cambrian Place, the home of ship owner’s, maritime insurance and the purveyors of coal and grain.
I note the slippery and well oiled cobblestones that carried his venerable feet to Adelaide Street and the Evening Post.
He actually walked these streets and admired the comings and going’s of its inhabitants. Labelling and listing each accent, word, gate and trait.
How many who have read his works have seen themselves in the folded passages of his written word and world.
Seventy years on I now walk in his footsteps, past the little theatre and onto the Swing Bridge that at one time carried trains and lorries to and from the docks.
Looking down I see a cigarette end in the dusty gutter, still smouldering and remembering the last guttural cough.
Ghostly, the sound of the old docks stirs in my mind and a voice quietly says “ To begin at the beginning “
To begin at the beginning ,these words were the first introduction for me in to his world. The first introduction to his words and his life.
A life where purity of his written word justifies the passion and the colloquial lilt of the Welsh spoken word.
Long ago I sat in the Antelope pub in the Mumbles just to soak up the beer smell and the muffled murmurings of the old men at the bar.
On a Saturday morning I’d sit in the Kardomah Café imagining a Bohemian gathering of poets, musicians and writers.
Oh what things did the Café witness and what musings and critiques do the empty chairs whisper and repeat when the doors are closed.
Walking back to my apartment I thank Captain Cat for his memory and for my dreams of Polly Garter and I stand and reflect with the young Dylan at the little Theatre Square and gob at a Gull for luck and acknowledge the long dead and their trials.
Chris OMalley