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Along the Purley Way

I took my son on my dead father’s behalf

To see the remains of Croydon Aerodrome

Still spreading amazingly along the Purley Way.

Associated buildings shine in sunsets of day or mind

Like a last convincing idea of the future.

Now it’s just fast-food warehouses, it’s all junk.

The security guards in unbuttoned coats

Know it’s not where anything’s at, even in Croydon.

There’s where my un-apprenticed chippie son has been

Helping Leisureworld plc put in

Millions, put in lights to blow your mind

Around half an acre of former office basement.

Two-quid lager needs the help of strobes

To jackpot back into your reeling head;

Quality’s an old obsession doesn’t pay.

Thus Croydon swings and knocks things down

But has left enough along the Purley Way

Of what no one would know unless they knew

How from there a streamlined future flew

When my father, turning thirty, cast weather runes,

Careful in his new civvies, buttoned up.

The sun for me rubs these buildings new,

Glints imagined grass. Two sons, we almost

Hear the whir of time’s fly-past.