Happy Christmas, Ethel!

Ethel was my friend and I was proud to know him.
His mother called him Jud, 
the name she'd given at his Christening,
but no one else could call him that.
The last to try still carried a black eye.
No, Ethel was his chosen name --
or rather, Ethelred, although the red
had quickly fallen out of use.
Why Ethel/Ethelred? Why that?
His second name was Mudd!

He was a proud man and his chest would swell
whenever -- and they sometimes did -- his friends
would rattle off his full address: 
Ethel Mudd
          Furnace Man,
                    The Gasworks
                              Love Lane
                                        Tadnam --
where, as it happened, I'd been sent
to see what I could paint. That's how we met.

He watched me for a bit, then asked
if I would draw him at his fire.
Of course, I said I would -- and he went wild,
as if his team had won the cup. He asked:
And with that charcoal you were using, eh?
"Certainly," I said. 
I'm off to wash me face!
"You're not, you know! Just don't you dare!"
and then explained, as best I could
the soot was part of him and what he did.
Gave character. He didn't understand,
but did agree -- and liked the Portrait when
I'd finished it. And in your paintin' Guvnor,
show me at my fire? "Well no....

I drew you yesterday..." showed him again
the drawing that would go into the work.
"You're doing up your bootlace... you recall?"
Oh, he recalled alright, but floundered
when he tried to understand...
Why would I rather have him doing that
than stoking up his fire?

I pointed on the drawing to the way
his muscles tensed and shaped the back and legs,
the lines of stress that ran down through his form,
how figures in the background echoed this --
as did the open furnace door, its shadow
and the flames.... And I can do all that,
he gasped  by tying up my boot! -- I must
be quite a special man, at that!
"Ethel," I said, "You are, you surely are!"

We sent each other Christmas cards for years.