St Clement's
soiree rides
again
'TWAS a resounding evening at the St Clement's arts soiree this week with readings from two extremes of the literary landscape – Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas, caught in a snowstorm in a melancholy return to a bomb-shattered post-war Swansea; and Spike Milligan at his zany best, caricaturing Ireland and himself with a laugh a line.
Thomas's Return Journey was read by soiree kingpin Pieter Scholtz, Barbara Martin, Roger Knowles and Nick Kightley. Between them they sure got across Thomas's masterly portrayal of bleakness.
"The wind cut up the street with a soft sea-noise hanging on its arm, like a hooter in a muffler. I could see the swathed hill stepping up out of the town, which you never could see properly before, and the powdered field of the roofs of Milton Terrace and Watkin Street and Fullers Row. Fish-frailed, netbagged, umbrella'd, pixie-capped, fur-shoed, blue-nosed, puce-lipped, blinkered like drayhorses, scarved, mittened, galoshed, wearing everything but the cat's blanket, crushes of shopping-women crunched in the little Lapland of the once grey drab street, blew and queued and yearned for hot tea, as I began my search through Swansea town cold and early on that wicked February morning …"
Powerful stuff. You shiver. Thomas couldn't have evoked more weary despair if he were writing about a return to contemporary Maritzburg.
Then the Milligan drollery - Puckoon, set in the time of the partitioning of North and South in Ireland, read by Scholtz and Kightley. This is a masterpiece of comic writing, starting with a fierce debate between the central character "The Milligan" and the writer who, of course, is Milligan.
At issue is the spindly white legs with which the writer Milligan has endowed the character The Milligan. Also the violent fat wife he has thrust upon him. This is classic stuff that only Milligan could have dreamed up.
The Milligan sings as he rides his bicycle down the road.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh IIIIIIIIIIIIII
Once knew a judy in Dubleen town
Her eyes were blue and her hair was brown,
One night on the grass I got her down
And I …
"The rest of the words were lost to view as he turned a bend in the road …"
Magnificent. And how about this?
"Father Patrick Rudden paused as he trod the gravel path of the church drive. He ran his kerchief round the inside of his holy clerical collar. Then he walked slowly to the grave of the late Miss Griselda Strains and pontifically lowered his ecclesiastical rump on to the worn slab, muttering a silent apology to the departed lady, but reflecting, it wouldn't be the first time she'd had a man on top of her, least of all one who apologised as he did."
Or this bit where Father Rudden restrains Milligan from hurriedly leaving on his bicycle by seizing the seat of his trousers.
"Oh, steady Father," gasped Milligan, "dem's more than me trousers yer clutchin'."
"Sorry, Milligan, said the priest, releasing his grip. We celibates are inclined to forget them parts."
Wonderful stuff. I'm sure most of us had read Puckoon but the soiree folk were helpless with laughter all the same. Puckoon has to be one of the funniest books ever written in English.
Tailpiece
THE epitaph on Spike Milligan's gravestone: "I told you I was ill."(He died aged 83).
Last word
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth. - Edith Sitwell
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