Winter in England & Wales

Swansea is another of Britain’s cities that was practically leveled during WWII. Its most famous poet, Dylan Thomas witnessed the bombing and told his friend, “Bert, our Swansea has died.” He then went on to write extensively about his hometown and the devastation of war. He lived most of his life in Swansea, a place he called “our ugly, lovely town.” Today I went to the Dylan Thomas Center and learned a bit about Wales’s most famous poet. Apparently he did four US tours in the early 50s and was treated like a rock star. There was one plaque about his death in 1953 at the Hotel Chelsea in the city that makes me think the whole thing is very suspicious. The story is that he drank himself to death, having declared, “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies” at the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village. Later it seems to have been revealed that the doctors mishandled his treatment and gave him too much morphine. So at the age of 39, this rockstar poet died from an overdose at the Chelsea. Meanwhile, he was being followed by a “sleuth” on this trip to New York who had been hired by Time magazine to get some dirt on him because of a libel lawsuit Dylan Thomas had filed against the magazine. That information was just displayed in the exhibit today as if it were just an interesting little tidbit, but I’m thinking it’s the first clue in a murder mystery. “Do not go gentle into that good night.”Lue lisää

I noticed as I’ve traveled north it is getting harder to understand the locals. I’m in Cheshire now, in the city of Chester, and they are starting to sound like Beatles (I’m now a half hour south of Liverpool). Went over to the tourist office and signed up for a couple of walking tours for the next couple of days — one has a Roman theme and the other is medieval. I took a tour of Chester Cathedral today and then sat at a local cafe to map out a plan for the next two days.Lue lisää