I feel it pulling, pulling me

A real magnetic force

Spanning place, transcending time,

Nostalgia the cause;

A siren incantation

To pass through history’s doors.

 

Deep within this grey-haired man

A twelve year old lives still

Recalling the excitement

Anticipating till

The 7 o’clock Brittania

Came heaving up the hill.

 

The cutting has long gone now

In-filled from bank to bank

And built on with new housing

With semis rank to rank.

When first I saw this sacrilege

The spirit in me sank.

 

And half a mile on up the line

Further desecration

Which left a hollow feeling

A kind of amputation

As Lidl trades where walk the ghosts

Of Hucknall Central Station.

 

This is, in fact, the point I make

Just why I wrote this song:

Do other schoolboys sense this too

Or am I the only one

Who feels an ever-present ache

Although the limb has gone?

 

Old bridges and embankments

Disused and overgrassed

Where Streaks and Jubilees and Kings

And Nine Freights steamed their last

Just furniture from Glory Days

Part of a Greater Past.

 

I cannot see these things today

Without them pulling me

Calling me from yesteryear

Across my history

As though I left some limb behind

Faint in memory.

 

When we cross the great divide

Our earthly time no more

And we tap expectantly

Upon St Peter’s door

Are we granted youth again

Vitality restored?

 

I’d choose again that I’d be twelve

If this they would permit

To feel the old excitement

As on that bank I’d sit

And watch the Grimsby fish train hauled -

            At 7 by a Brit.