I was born under Milk Wood. Thomas’ play echoed in the voices around me. Small-town Welshness. Anglophone. Talk, usually careless, was the social medium of the day. Wordiness stood in for Godliness, and condemned the sins of the neighbours.

Mrs Dewinter sat among her Victorian bric-a-brac and taxidermy and plotted revenge. On everybody. Mr Jones, homosexual when it was still criminal, caught the bus to the metropolis in his camel coat and Astrakhan hat. Chris and Helen, the modern newlyweds, delighted in their new home by walking naked on the fitted carpet.

A stone Messiah peeked over the wall of the tiny Catholic church as the black-clad Chapel women scuttled by, muttering about Graven Images. And the clever-clever girls skewered the unwary with their words, and laughed as their victims squirmed like insects on the barbs of their wit.

Meanwhile I created pictures of all this in my head that now leak out. Become art. Struggle for solidity, for life before they are lost to time.