Sweet Arcadia

The trains took us away from the smoke, from Fenchurch Street Through Limehouse, West Ham, Barking, and over the fields To Laindon, Dunton, Pitsea, Benfleet To Southend-on-Sea 39 miles and 40 chains over the fields, through the thick clay We took over the neglected meadow, The untidy farmyard, and overgrown hedgerow Smallholdings--homemade, handmade Makeshift towns, a land for the people, a home of your own Sweet Arcadia Tumbledown shacks and tumbledown cliffs A refuge from the rent book We built our own shops, We built our own cinemas, we named our own houses: The Haven, Cozy Nook, Landsbury, Beerer John, Tellsville, Bon Ami And when the waters the breached the seawalls, we moved back inland Into Surrey: Box Hill, Normandy, Selsdon Vale Into Kent: Cliffsend, Seasalter, Dungeness Into Sussex: Jurys Gap, Pett Level, Peacehaven Sweet Albion, makeshift, make do and mend We built mock-Tudor sheds and houses from train carriages From asbestos and corrugated iron We took your land, and we made it our land Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia