in a 1951 letter to a friend, dylan thomas wrote:

"the son of sloth and a turnip, either i hang by my whiskery toes thinking of nothing and lust, or sit big-headed in the wet earth thinking of turnip poems, and time snails by, and day after day i grow lazier, and fatter, and sadder, and older, and deafer, and duller. grey grizzles in my dry hair mat. gout snarls in my big toe. my children grow large and rude. i renounce my art to make money and then make no money. i celebrate other people's birthday with false bonhomous abandon. i daydream of chile, a place i never want to visit. i write poems and hide them before i can read them, and next week i shall be thirty-seven horrors old."