the age of the train (part one)

i've only just recovered from the nightmare journey that was my business day-trip to london on the 18th January. i could go on about a myriad of rail fuck-ups, mis-information and startling ineptitude (and probably will at some point soon), but will instead use this as a good opportunity to unleash some of my railway related poems from the dark and fairly distant days of being a london commuter (redhill to tooting via god-only knows).

'cause

Fighting on the Beaches with a Zulu Lion Tamer
A headline from the paper that he read 'cause he was with her
Hardly a London lad, he read 'The Standard' 'cause he was down there
And bought it every day 'cause he knew he'd never leave her


July 1995

I distinctly remember reading the first line of this poem as a headline in the London Evening Standard one evening when enduring the miserable commute home. I could of course be wrong (and i have tried to get a response from the paper itself, but all emails have been roundly ignored), but unless i am emphatically proven so i remain defiant that Fighting on the Beaches with a Zulu Lion Tamer was a real-life headline.

I pretty much wrote the rest of it in my head, but it became even more memorable as an attempt to put a positive spin on an already-failing relationship, a relationship that had one main problem at it's root - mainly i resented spending 3 hours a day on a shitty train! i did leave her soon after, the poem becoming my very own time-capsule...

Strangely, when meeting my future-wife almost immediately afterwards i found out that she was with a train driver, and his 'route' was one that i used pretty frequently from clapham junction to east grinstead (or as it was rather predictable - and fittingly - named, east grimstead), through my least favourite station of the entire south-east network: east croydon. i despised that station - i was either waiting on a platform and had to leg-it to another one at short notice with 100 other sad souls, or i was forced to change (despite getting on a direct train) at the last minute due to some unforseen fuck-up... on the way to work it defined the moment when i realised that there was only another 40mins of travelling before i was sat at my desk; on the way home it reminded me that i'd probably have to walk the 20mins back from the station because my then-girlfriend didn't want to give me a lift. like i said, i despised that station.

The Creep Who Stole Croydon

Passing by,
Same old, same old,
Eight twenty five,
No change.

Every day,
Same old, same old,
Passing by
Five here
Five there
And I'm gone.

To think of where I spend my time.
One day I'll put it in my pocket
And take it home.

But, no.
It's not what you think.
Croydon and I are just friends.


April 1996