Nativity of Dylan Thomas

Time enough it was then - and I remember so long, deep long, rolling waves of time long ago when childhood struggled into confused teenage years when one English lesson was much the same as another in that fading car-making town, and I never remember whether it was that Macbeth was taught to us by Mrs Dickens or Dickens was taught us by Lady Macbeth.

And all the lessons run together now - the day I fell asleep on the dream-dark desk after the previous night's School Passion Play Production when Pilate was late on stage because his servant was round the back of the toilets, drinking,eyes cold, lager from the bottles they'd smuggled in under the hawk-sharp, hook-shaped nose of Mr Challis the Drama teacher.

And I dig down deep, through the decaying detritus of dark days of Dickens and the yellow-stockinged steward, iambic pentameters and cross-dressimg couples and rhyming couplets and put in my thumb and pull out a peach.

Or Peaches. Child-viewed, bright-hued, breathing another's idyll of the long-ago dream-days when you knew the specialness of being you, long hidden through the days of struggle and work and the day-long, dazed, long days of the office stole away the tastes and smells and scrapes and yells of being a child.

And through the haze of days the shady, shallow figure of Gwilym swims through - subliming sex into spiritual sonnets, scribing hymns to girls then changing the names to "God".

And I wonder... would Gwilym be a famous Christian song-writer these days? Only I think I've heard a lot of his songs.