My Father's Places

I met Aeronwy Thomas many years ago - I was at school studying Thomas's 'Under Milk Wood' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' and one of my teachers, who knew Aeronwy Thomas through the Dylan Thomas Society, asked her to come and talk to us. She was a wonderful speaker, we all felt the magic she perceived in her childhood, her love for her father and got some sense of the man behind the myth. Many of those stories appear in this book - her mother's stew, which would be green by the end of the week, her parents leaving her alone to care for her younger brother while they would go drinking and the magic of Laugharne and its people. Even at that young age and in the midst of a rebellion against my parents (I was 14) I remember my show more blood boiling at her parent's behaviour and was quite relieved that they weren't my parents - something I know she would have felt was a harsh judgement. As she says of her mother, 'When her husband died, she was bereft, with moments of despair when she looked at the empty bed, describing her attempts to forget with other men, drinking and unruly behaviour which did not give her any satisfaction. This is an interesting read for anyone interested in the last years of Dylan Thomas's life. show less