OUR MAN in EUROPE, now BELIZE, Dave Delacroix: "Dylan Thomas Blues."

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Dylan Thomas Blues."

(Dedicato: Carol Aniello & Nadia Sellers)

"Dylan Thomas Blues."

...NOW WHEN I WAS A LAD without a thought, bandaged, padded below kneecaps from School days RUGBY fields, shins kicked & knocked from SCRUM & ball-pass to score a "TRY!"  on a Yorkshire's Winter's hard turf yet COULD - for a 13-yr old School-Blazer/Tie, with "Piss-off!" attitude survive! And after a cup of hot BOVIRIL, a "Good show old boy!" from the team Captain. Teammates slap on your back? A 3-hour "CHARA-BANC" (old bus) ride back to the ranch/old school, singing/bellowing out RUGGER SONGS, oddball renditions of popular tunes, incl. Johnny Cash's: "Cocksuckers in the Sky."

Now when I was a LAD, School Daze, School TRIPS to LONDON, satchel-Sandwiches & flask of Tea, to go see Nelsons column, ROYALTY CRYPTS & GALLERY PORTRAIT- ROYAL SELFIES, and the British Science Museum where, we then ignorantly glanced at our forefathers - Sheffield STEEL towns - industrial ingenuity: "TOY-R-US" in iron & greed?...BRAIN DEAD at this point but the icing/cake of the London School Trip gig, an hour to escape, back of the British Museum, the Grand Russell Hotel-Bloomsbury with an Irish Barkeep who - I guess? - needed our shillings and who, after 2 Pints of Ale, joined in with a Dublin brogue: "Ghostriders in the Sky!" Her name was Brenda.

Now when I was a LAD, put TO, after serious schoolgirl seduction AT SCHOOL put my hand up her 14-yr old skirt which at SOME POINT she thought was a "might forward"; it got me dragged into School-Headmasters quarters, a place, a DUDE nobody ever saw...Yet BONKING in haystacks, BONKING in the fields: "Country Matters!" In the rural 1960s nothing seemed wrong. Decades LATER I always felt sorry for those URBAN Kids. Wall to wall people. "Can I take U for a Burger. Take U to the WIMPEY BAR/coffee? "I hear the KINKS R playing at the PALAIS...but WE R under-aged/no chance to BONK?" (Dead Cocks in the Sky!)

Now when I was a LAD, "FERN HILL, STRAWBERRY FIELDS, BLACK BERRY WAY", unbridled, I'd weekend exercise the local famers horse and more often as not, a vivacious School gal pal riding pillion. We'd trot then canter, tear up the local golf course greens then gallop, golf balls of anger whizzing by our heads, nary a thought of what tomorrow would bring. An Under Milkwood. A Dylan Thomas blues. We countryside Lords of the flies. We Ghostriders in the sky. We childhood Ghostriders in the sky.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.