Sunbury, Sweet Sunbury (1960s Dream)
by the banks of the Thames, where the willows lean low…
In Sunbury town, where the river would gleam,
And boys kicked balls on the village green,
The milk came clinking at quarter to eight,
And neighbours would nod through each white garden gate.
The sixties had come with its twist and its shout,
But in Sunbury, life just pottered about—
With the butcher, the baker, the shop on the bend,
And children who vanished till teatime’s end.
We rode our bikes with streamers and pride,
Past hedges and hedgerows, arms open wide,
The gasworks still rumbled, the pylons stood tall,
And the ice cream man chimed down the lane by the wall.
The corner shop smelled of mint and of dust,
Of licorice strings and halfpenny trust.
The Thames flowed lazy, in no frantic race,
Just meandering softly past place after place.
Sunday meant roast, and a flickering telly—
With Dixon or Steptoe or old Albert Kelly.
We dreamed of space rockets, of mods in the city,
Yet Sunbury stayed still, and stubbornly pretty.
Schooldays were chalkboards and ink on the shirt,
Of beetles in jars and knees caked in dirt.
Teachers with slippers, and slipperier rules,
And mums in their curlers outside of the schools.
The smell of the river, the hum of the train,
The fog on the towpath, the patter of rain.
A town in a pocket of time now long passed,
Yet the memory of Sunbury seems always to last.
So here’s to the town where the boathouses doze,
Where willow trees whisper old secrets they know.
Though decades may pass and the world rearrange,
Dear Sunbury’s soul—may it never quite change.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 