Robert Verdon, #107, Pen-y-Bryn,

now ‛Meadow View’

this little street in Dunvant

near Swansea in Wales

is where we lived

when I was four

the house my grandmother

actually owned because her husband

and his mates built it by hand

on a minimum-frontage block

in a village (cheap, you see),

the house that was saved from fiery

destruction by Thatcher’s grant to

fix the roof and electrics

(home-owners, look you!),

and has since been sold, and is

now on the path to gentrification,

and my aunt, the last occupant

now lives in a council flat

not far from where Dylan Thomas

lived as a kid, in Uplands, near

the park where the hunchback sat.