An apology for a station

on the Hampton Court line,

the place where the fast

slowed down for Surbiton.

It overlooked a sewage farm

we’d cycle past, a short cut.

Lower Marsh Lane

more or less summed it up.

 

Sad? Not for us.

John and I would trainspot there,

watching the Merchant Navys

and Battle of Britains

round the bend and thunder

towards us, while listening

to the cricket, our conquerors

Worrell and Sobers, Hall and Griffith.

 

Those days long gone. But now

smellylands is in the news,

a “cannabis forest” found

on waste ground

close to the effluent,

growing under the noses

of police and residents

more used to the whiff of sewage.

 

Commuters may have seen the plants

as they looked blearily out of the window.

Police said it resembled

a forest of Christmas trees.

Sensibilities and scents of outrage,

something in the water.

As a university friend once said to me:

This is bloody good shit, mate.