|'ve just come across a song I wrote a while ago, re-imagining the South Yorkshire pit village I grew up in and then the move back to the East Coast where I lived until I left at the age of 18.

The England I Knew

The England I knew is now disappearing
The woods and the hedgerows are vanishing fast
The countryside that I loved and grew up with
Is quickly becoming a thing of the past

Where are the summers that were golden with sunshine,
The winters where snow lay thick on the ground?
The soft days of autumn with apples and conkers
The spark in the belly when spring came around?

The school that I went to now wouldn't pass muster
With its toilets outside and the coal-fired stove,
Where those at the front were roasted and blistered
While those at the back just shivered and froze.

Holidays once meant the great British seaside
And the sandwiches really were crunchy with sand.
Though the castles we made there were soon washed away
Those we built in our minds still steadfastly stand.

By the Co-Op in the village, in pit boots and flat caps,
Old men in white mufflers on the street corner stood,
Spitting out on the pavement a lifetime of coal dust
From pits that have long since been closed down for good.

In the sixties we moved back east to the coast again,
Away from the collieries and the landscape of coal.
But for friends that I left there, the future was certain:
The dark, dirty coalface, then life on the dole.

Then on Saturday nights, in pubs by the dockside
We'd fight fingerless fishermen, drunk on beer and tots.
Now instead of the trawlers tied up at the quayside,
They've built a marina for luxury yachts.

We've lost all the elms that once graced our landscape
And it looks like the beeches will go the same way
But still chainsaw and bulldozer rip through the forests
Because trees must make room for a new motorway

And wherever you look, the Yankees are coming,
They've invaded our high streets, taken over our minds.
Now burger and pizza joints pepper the landscape
And on telly their accents are all you can find.

Quick, send for the police, someone's stolen my England.
"Now then, when was the last time you had it, d'you say?
Hmmm, I can't recall seeing anything like that around here
Are you sure you didn't just throw it away?"

So don't turn your back on the England you love
Hold onto its hand like your daughter or son.
'Cos if you look away for a couple of minutes
When you glance back again…sorry, it's gone.