A Childs Christmas in Wales

The above painting shows a Black Five (Stannier) locomotive crossing the Bascule Bridge at Carmarthen in winter. I did the painting at the end of last year and for the most part it has hung on my own wall.

I have heard the BBC are doing a full reading of a Childs Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas. To be honest I am hot and cold with Dylan Thomas. Some work I really like. Other  works pass me by. A Childs Christmas in Wales is one of his works that takes me straight in with its nostalgic descriptive prose. It started life as a piece for the radio and he developed it so it has a different origin to many of his works.

Anyway reading it makes me think of my own childhood of the excitement of the first snowfall and dragging our sledge to the big hill with my brother and sister. Invariably we would have to come back almost straight away as my sister got very cold and we would end up pulling the sled home with her on it. Snowball fights, ice slides, and large snowballs set loose down the hill are all distant but real memories. I still remember opening my present on Christmas morning,  a green train made by my father from a piece of telegraph pole, and some of the fence from the back garden. I am not sure how he explained the hole in the fence to the landlord? That train lasted years and my son played with it when he was young.

I guess that is the real appeal of Thomas's Childs Christmas in Wales in that it prompts the readers or listeners own memories.

Anyway have a Happy Christmas.