The monument of a thousand radio plays

and midnight angry violent arguments in which the host would

invariably

find the stirring spoon such a joyous toy in which to thrill his sterile wife

who listened in to make sure he was really at work,

was barely visible

as David Owen, former prison inmate of a town near Prestatyn,

former, yet not reformed, alcoholic like his father,

former fighter, brawler and unreformed gambler, better, debtor

like his mother and a thief of uneasy time, as well as the odd