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George Ring tap-danced with one foot and made a rhythmical, kissing noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth ... Samuel turned around. George Ring whinnied in a corner with several women. Their voices shrilled and rasped through the cross noise of the drums.
Dylan Thomas, Adventures in the Skin Trade, New Directions, 1964, p. 42-47.
TIME: 1933
PLACE: London
CIRCUMSTANCE: Sam's companion George in a nightclub
As though he were sitting indoors at a window, he put out his hand to feel the rain. Shoes slopped past on the pavement above his head ... The steps were suddenly lit up as the door opened for George Ring. He came out carefully and tidily, to a rush of music and voices that faded at once with the vanishing of the smoky light...
Dylan Thomas, Adventures In The Skin Trade, New Directions, 1964, p. 51.
TIME: 1933
PLACE: London
CIRCUMSTANCE: Sam and his companions emerge from the nightclub
The fair was over, the lights in the cocoanut stalls were put out, and the wooden horses stood still in the darkness, waiting for the music and the hum of the machines that would set them trotting forward. One by one, in every booth, the naptha jets were turned down and the canvases pulled over the little gambling tables. The crowd went home, and there were lights in the windows of the caravans.
Nobody had noticed the girl. In her black clothes she stood against the side of the roundabouts, hearing the last feet tread upon the sawdust and the last voices die into the distance. Then, all alone in the deserted ground, surrounded by the shapes of wooden horses and cheap fairy boats, she looked for a place to sleep. Now here and now there, she raised the canvas that shrouded the cocoanut stalls and peered into the warm darkness. She was frightened to step inside, and as a mouse scampered across the littered shavings on the floor, or as the canvas creaked and a rush of wind set it dancing, she ran away and hid again near the roundabouts. Once she stepped on the boards; the bells round a horse's throat jingled and were still; she did not dare breathe until all was quiet again and the darkness had forgotten the noise of the bells. Then here and there she went peeping for a bed, into each gondola, under each tent. But there was nowhere, nowhere in all the fair for her to sleep. One place was too silent, and in another was the noise of mice.
Dylan Thomas, 'After The Fair,' from Adventures In The Skin Trade, New Directions, 1964, p.54.
TIME: Indeterminate
PLACE: Wales
CIRCUMSTANCE: a runaway girl, looking for a place to sleep
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