(1) But it is also the incantatory darkness of dreams and visions, death and memory, as an observing consciousness creeps into the "blinded bedrooms" of the town's inhabitants, hushing and inviting us on: "Come now, drift up the dark, come up the drifting sea-dark street now in the dark night seesawing like the sea ... " Blind Captain Cat is dreaming of long-ago sea voyages and long-dead lovers; twice-widowed Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard of her henpecked husbands; Organ Morgan of musical extravaganzas; Polly Garter of babies; Mary Ann Sailors of the Garden of Eden; Dai Bread of "Turkish girls.
(2) He suggested that Mr Polly did not succeed popularly at the time because "I was a blue-eyed hero up to then and audiences hated seeing me as a little wizened chap with smarmed hair, being a henpecked husband.
(3) Not a million miles away we find Bruce Willis's notorious gunfor- hire in The Whole Nine (and Ten) Yards, adrift in a soulless suburb, moving the sprinkler around the lawn like any other henpecked corporate clockpuncher.