The announcement by George
Osborne, our Chancellor that Ebbsfleet in Kent has been chosen, yet again, to
be a major urban area, this time a Garden City, has both the media and the
blogosphere in a tizzy at the sheer daftness of the idea.
Scorn is being poured
along with some astonishment. The area
is almost swamp land in some respects and one of the least lovely parts of the
Kingdom. It is also slap in the middle
of one of the most congested areas of road networks in Europe.
But it does have an HST
railway station, a stop on the Dover to St. Pancras International line. Simon Jenkins in The Guardian has said that
on his journeys he has yet to see people getting on or off. On the occasions we
have used the line it does seem very quiet.
Rather than do a long
piece, here is a poem below about a station, long ago, on the Great Western
Railway between Oxford and Worcester, not far from Chipping Norton. Another time and another world.
Had George promised to
return Westminster to primeval swamp it would have been a better idea.
And a lot more popular.
Adlestrop
(Edward Thomas)
Yes, I remember Adlestrop
–
The name, because one
afternoon
Of heat the express-train
drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one
came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop – only the
name
And willow, willow-herb,
and grass.
And meadowsweet, and
haycocks dry.
No whit less still and
lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in
the sky.
And for that minute a
blackbird sang
Close by, and round him,
mistier,
Farther and farther, all
the birds
Of Oxfordshire and
Gloucestershire.
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