Across the road from his home was Cwmdonkin Park and he and his friends did all the things that young boys of that age did, they schemed and plotted, had adventures which were made doubly exciting by their powers of imagination. Both his parents had an influence in his writing, his father sent him to elocution lessons - just listen to a recording of him as First Voice in Under Milk Wood, that is a long stretch from being the voice of a Swansea boy. His mother's tendency towards small talk and gossip must have been a great inspiration to him in the writing of Under Milk Wood.