An Afternoon With Dylan Thomas

December 13, 2014

A few weeks ago, I celebrated the birth of Dylan Thomas with a post.  Via that post, I learned that my friend and neighbour Tak was another devotee of the Welsh bard.  That was fun to find out.  Even more fun was that Tak discovered the Cultch was staging Bob Kingdom’s one-man show about Thomas, and treated the everloving and I to tickets for today’s matinee.  I’ve been looking forward to it.

kingdombob

I certainly wasn’t disappointed.  Kingdom really becomes Thomas, is Thomas, as he stands on a stage bare but for a small wooden lectern.  This is the Dylan Thomas of the US tour circuit, the mature Thomas at the full flowering of his oratorical and lyrical powers but damaged by life.

Gentle stuff about boyhood memories and odd familes starts the show and becomes powerful poetry in Thomas’ words and Kingdom’s performance.  Many of the famous Thomas pieces — “The Force That Through The Gree Fuse”, “Do Not Go Gently Into That Dark Night”, “A Child’s Chrsitmas In Wales” et al — are seamlessly weaved through the show, with the wonderful “Fern Hill” essentially bringing the piece to a close.

A marvelous couple of hours.  Compliments are shared between Bob Kingdon and our good friend Tak.  Thanks!

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Image: Street Art I

December 13, 2014

street art I

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Spies In Suburbia: A Memoir

December 13, 2014

When I was eleven years old I lived in Ruislip Gardens which is a tiny suburb of Ruislip which, in turn, is a small suburb hanging on to the western edge of London.  I had a newspaper route which I took care of seven days a week starting at six each morning.

In London in those days we had a dozen or more daily newspapers and each subscriber to our delivery service could receive any permutation of papers. Most houses took two papers, and some many more. Sorting the right papers into the the right order in the right bags was a vital part of each morning’s routine at the shop.

By Christmas 1960, I was one of the senior delivery boys and had thus inherited a long route that covered the main road from Ruislip Gardens to Ruislip and included several side streets along the way. It took almost two hours and I sure earned my breakfast every day. On school days, it was split between two boys.

One of the side streets to which I delivered newspapers every day was Cranley Drive. And at 45 Cranley Drive lived a Canadian couple, Helen and Peter Kroger. I know I delivered papers to them but I don’t recall them at all, not even from the Christmas tip. However, in January 1961, the Krogers were arrested, and I do remember the street being closed off one cold morning by police cars and constables. It was revealed over the next few months that the Krogers were really Russian spies Morris and Lona Cohen, and that their basement on Cranley Drive included a sophisticated radio communications setup with Moscow.

It seemed exciting to a young kid in those dangerous days of Atom spies, the Third Man, Checkpoint Charlie. And I have kept my fascination with moles and sleeper cells ever since.

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A Symbolic Date?

December 13, 2014

I just woke up to realize that today is 12-13-14   (13th December 2014), probably the only time this will happen in my lifetime

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