Martyr to the turps, Dylan Thompson frequently woke in unfamiliar circumstances and attempted to catch the speech rhythms of the sea.
A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WARRNAMBOOL
One Christmas was so like another in those years around the sea town corner now, that I can
never remember whether it was 106 degrees in 1953 or whether it was 103 degrees in 1956.
All the Christmases roll into one down the wave-roaring salt-squinting years of yesterboy.
My hand goes into the fridge of imperishable memory and out come: salads and sunburn
lotions, the brief exuberant hiss of beer being opened and the laugh of wet-haired youths
around a Zepher 6, the smell of insect repellent and eucalyptus and the distant constant
slowly listless bang of the flywire door. And resting on a formica altar, waiting for Ron, the biggest Pav in the world; a magic Pav, a cut-and-come-again Pav for all the children in all the towns across the wide brown bee-humming trout-fit sheep-rich two-horse country.
And the Aunts. Always the Aunts. In the kitchen on the black-and-white photographed beach
of the past, playing out the rope to a shared childhood, caught in the undertow and drifting.
And some numerous Uncles, wondering sometimes why they weren't each other, coming
around the letterbox to an attacking field in the Test match and being driven handsomely by
some middle-order nephew, skipping down the vowel-flattening pitch and putting the ball into
the tent-flaps on the first bounce of puberty.