God speeded summer's end

It seems odd to be sweltering in this sort of heat at the beginning of October. Shorts have been dug out of the back of drawers where they have been hiding since last summer. Floaty cotton dresses have reappeared and even vest-lover R7 has ditched her winter underwear for the first time in 2011.

Yesterday involved a trip to the metropolis that is Carmarthen in search of the perfect school sock. Tender little toes are fussy about such things apparently so a visit to M&S was in order. I also needed to part with a Boots gift voucher, which required a Clinique counter. We accomplished our chores speedily, grabbed a carrier bag full of sandwiches from M&S and headed home in the heat.

It was in my head, as it was so hot, that a picnic would be nice on a big open beach somewhere. We attempted Pendine but it was stuffed to the gills. Nowhere to park unless we were willing to part with three quid and carry our picnic which, being hungry and grumpy, we weren't.

Instead we turned round and went back to Laugharne which has the virtue of being on the way home from Carmarthen while having a nice big shade-providing castle and a famous dead writer. It also has pushchair/toddler friendly paths (so useful in the past), free parking and very good ice cream.

It was lovely and it was cool sitting by the estuary eating our sandwiches and then we walked along the path that Dylan Thomas used to tread on his way to the pub and went to peer into tiny green-painted garage with incredible views that served as his writing hut. This is where he wrote Do not go gentle into that good night (although I don't know how anyone could write anything sitting in front of such a distractingly stunning view. Perhaps it was raining.) Thomas lived in Laugharne with his wife Caitlin and their children Colm, Aeronwy and Lewelyn until he died in 1953 and the couple are buried in St Martin's Churchyard. 

We peered from the path into the front door of the seashaken house and then climbed back down the path and scrambled over the breakneck of rocks back to the path along the estuary.

PROLOGUE by Dylan Thomas

This day winding down now

At God speeded summer's end

In the torrent salmon sun,

In my seashaken house

On a breakneck of rocks

Tangled with chirrup and fruit,

Froth, flute, fin, and quill

At a wood's dancing hoof,

By scummed, starfish sands

With their fishwife cross

Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,

Out there, crow black, men

Tackled with clouds, who kneel

To the sunset nets,

Geese nearly in heaven, boys

Stabbing, and herons, and shells

That speak seven seas,

Eternal waters away

From the cities of nine

Days' night whose towers will catch

In the religious wind

Like stalks of tall, dry straw,

At poor peace I sing

To you strangers (though song

Is a burning and crested act,

The fire of birds in

The world's turning wood,

For my sawn, splay sounds),

Out of these seathumbed leaves

That will fly and fall

Like leaves of trees and as soon

Crumble and undie

Into the dogdayed night.

Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,

And the dumb swans drub blue

My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack

This rumpus of shapes

For you to know

How I, a spinning man,

Glory also this star, bird

Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.

Hark: I trumpet the place,

From fish to jumping hill! Look:

I build my bellowing ark

To the best of my love

As the flood begins,

Out of the fountainhead

Of fear, rage red, manalive,

Molten and mountainous to stream

Over the wound asleep

Sheep white hollow farms

To Wales in my arms. 

Hoo, there, in castle keep,

You king singsong owls, who moonbeam

The flickering runs and dive

The dingle furred deer dead!

Huloo, on plumbed bryns,

O my ruffled ring dove

In the hooting, nearly dark

With Welsh and reverent rook,

Coo rooing the woods' praise,

Who moons her blue notes from her nest

Down to the curlew herd!

Ho, hullaballoing clan

Agape, with woe

In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!

Heigh, on horseback hill, jack

Whisking hare! who

Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's

Clangour as I hew and smite

(A clash of anvils for my

Hubbub and fiddle, this tune

On a tongued puffball)

But animals thick as thieves

On God's rough tumbling grounds

(Hail to His beasthood).

Beasts who sleep good and thin,

Hist, in hogsback woods! The haystacked

Hollow farms in a throng

Of waters cluck and cling,

And barnroofs cockcrow war!

O kingdom of neighbors, finned

Felled and quilled, flash to my patch

Work art and the moonshine

Drinking Noah of the bay,

With pelt, and scale, and fleece:

Only the drowned deep bells

Of sheep and churches noise

Poor peace as the sun sets

And dark shoals every holy field.

We will ride out alone and then,

Under the stars of Wales,

Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across

The water lidded lands,

Manned with their loves they'll move,

Like wooden islands, hill to hill.

Huloo, my proud dove with a flute!

Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,

Tom tit and Dai mouse!

My ark sings in the sun

At God speeded summer's end

And the flood flowers now.

PICTURE: Paddlers at New Quay by Maggie Christie.