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Dream Time

Stuart Butler

Monday, August 22nd, 2005

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 It was only 30 miles away from Swindon,
But it might as well have been on the moon:
We never ever went to Oxford,
Although my posh cousin did, soon
After I first went to Headington and Cowley,
In the old days of Division 3.
We were on a winning streak
And I never saw Swindon lose there
Although in Ted Heath’s 3 day week,
We went to the game 24 hours too soon,
Thinking Oxford’s crowds were even lower
Than the idiots like us following our useless shower.
These memories returned 30 years later,
On an open topped bus with Alice, my daughter.
We went to Pembroke College for a blackboard exhibition
Of seminal moments of blackboard exposition
Form Einstein, Oppenheim and there on me ead son,
A corner kick scenario from World Cup Bobby Robson;
And I got lost in Railway Dream Time,
Remembering Cup Final Day, 1973,
Stopping at a signal box for a cup of tea,
On the Oxford line at Bicester, trudging up the stairs,
As I heard a radio sounding out the cheers;
I walked in the box, clutching my old cream billy can,
“Ian Porterfield’s just scored for Sunderland!”
A voice shouted out from among the burnished levers,
And pictures of diesels and old favourite steamers –
He then waved us on, waving a red scarf,
“Right away, mate”; I can still hear his laugh,
Drifting along in this bus from that line,
As I am enveloped by railway time,
Where anything good from way back then,
Will happen forever, again and again.

© Stuart Butler

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/dream-time/