Sixty four years of capital passion
As a very young man with a five shilling Red Rover I adventured with friends from Whitehall to Camden
Via that technological miracle of yours, the Post Office Tower.
I was schooled opposite the walls of Greenwich park and thrown out of the flower gardens for playing football.
I took one of your buses to New Cross Hospital with my grandfather’s broken hearing aid
And later went to Goldsmith’s College just along the road
(Although even there your pavements had no gold – you’d think, wouldn’t you?)
As a child I heard your boat horns toot on New Year’s Eve
Listening and shivering with my mother high above Galleons Reach.
As a boy I was astonished by the dome of St Paul’s
And even more astonished that my father,a stern far left-leaning man
Bought me a copy of the New Testament in the cathedral shop
(You bring out the strangest things in the most inexplicable of people)
I have lunched with a notorious armed robber in a Brockley pub
(For the best of academic reasons, although we still got drunk)
Lived and worked with comedians of fame in Blackheath and Lambeth
(Although none of us were well known then; I still await my fifteen minutes).
I have walked your streets with friends and family
Who have come from furthest Bradford and Brighton, British Columbia and distant Sydney.
I, the dyed in the vegan wool south Londoner, married a girl from way up north in Barnet
Talk about Romeo and Juliette. We even had a balcony scene in Crouch End.
You still astonish me. Barely a week goes by when I don’t venture into your heart,
Walking the South Bank like a gape mouthed tourist in my own city
Although I am now technically an expat living in Surrey
I can still be found Trespassing the cobbles in Cardinal Cap Alley
Meeting brothers or sisters on your bridges and in your gardens
And stalking the City margins with Suggs singing Norton Folgate in my ears.
I have been found with a friend after a bar too many, watching floating robot jelly fish in the turbine hall
And have known far too many of your pubs and their beer and whisky.
Delightfully, I still get lost in my exploring – but I’d rather be lost with you than found elsewhere.
I could write ten thousand lines and still write more about you
The older I get the more you exhaust me. But you are never exhausted.
You have given me so much, laid so much at my door.
Every memory I have of you is like a hand-holding in the darkness
That comes before dawn or just after dusk
As your river sounds slap my ears and as my ageing eyes adjust.
Eyecatching 