63

a London bus journey

William Hatchett

The first 63 bus ran in 1919. These poems,

which are part autobiography, part social
history and part sketch book, offer some
pictures of life seen through the prism of
an iconic London bus route.

Honor Oak Publishing

63

a London bus journey

William Hatchett

Honor Oak Publishing

Introduction
The suburbs are my home, my natural milieu, and I like to write about
them. I work in an office in central London and live in Forest Hill in
south-east London. A strange trick of fate (we call it life) has compelled
me to make the same bus journey from house to office, and back, for 16
years. It was on those daily journeys, through all seasons and weathers,
that these poems sprang into life, usually unbidden but often assisted by
scribbling in a notebook. Many of them are sonnets because I could usually complete one, or at least have the bare bones of it done, by the end of
the journey, which would last for about an hour. It was
satisfying to achieve a sense of completion a bit like doing a crosssword
puzzle, or finishing a chapter.
There are many other buses, and routes, conveying us in a dream-like
state through the panorama of London. It is not a place fixed in time, but
a continuum of people, landscape and history. London is a
living organism, an unfinished journey. As it progresses slowly along the
Old Kent Road, the Anglo Saxon Watling Street, the 63 bus follows the
same course as Roman legionaries, Celtic armies, stagecoaches and herds
of cattle being driven to Smithfields Market. Sometimes, if you peer carefully enough through the windows, you can see still see their ghosts.
It is to my mother that I owe by my love of buses. As I mention in my
first poem, she taught me sit on the top deck. Today, when I am there,
preferably top left, I would prefer to look out on the world, daydream and
write words on paper than to Tweet or consult Facebook through a screen
(although these activities certainly have their place).
These poems, which are part autobiography, part social history and
part sketchbook, offer some pictures of life seen through the prism of an
iconic London bus route. (The first 63 ran in 1919.) If they dont provide
any fresh insights into the mysteries of life, I hope that they may give
some pleasure during an idle moment, perhaps to someone who is
sitting on a bus.
William Hatchett, Forest Hill, October, 2016
w.hatchett@virgin.net

Here we go then. Were leaving the house. This typeface is called Minion
Pro, designed in 1990 by Adobe Systems and inspired by late Renaissance
era type, it says here. Nice isnt it. Like I said, I used to ride on Bournemouths
trolley buses with my mum when I was a kid. We would go to a department
store called Bobbys. She would have coffee. I would have Coke. In what
seemed to be akin to alchemy, adding a spoonful of sugar to the black fizzy
drink would remove all of the bubbles. Instantly. Magic for a child.

Upper deck (to my mother)

Its a shame you cant come with me
on my journey; that you are not able
to ride on the number sixty-three.
The upper deck is my Tower of Babel.
With your keen eyes and curiosity
you taught me to sit at the top
when I was young. You showed me how to see
the world unfolding, from bus-stop to bus-stop.
Pale green leaves unfurling on a tree
like umbrellas, a fine head of hair
two women arguing over a buggy.
Yes, there would be so much to share.
I view the world as if you were there
With similes I climb into the air.

Weve left the house now and were walking to the bus stop. Just my luck to live
close to a flipping cemetery a constant reminder of mortality. Its kind of
approporiate though. Each year, as I walk past it, I wait for the hawthorn
blossom to appear and horse chestnut trees improbable candle-like blossoms
to burst into life. Sometimes, I take refuge there.

In memorium
They cannot harm us, they are scattered
beneath oak and sycamore. Littered stones
express a vague hope for the interred
ash trees are whispering through their bones.
What on earth must they think of me
the curious dog-walkers who pass by
as I observe the leaves shifting filigree
lying flat on my back, watching the sky?
I could watch the trees liquid skin for hours
and study each miniature vignette
of bent mourners with their shop flowers.
Some are not forgotten at least not yet.
We hope that someone will do the same for us.
Through hawthorns, the scarlet flash of a bus.

Blackberries
The autumn berries sweet from the earth
are clambering over the graveyard fence.
The hawthorns shower us with rebirth
in the spring, in a cloud of incense.
Exposing our human fallibility
are the neat instructions by the gate.
Like a hymn of praise to gravity
the stones comic refusal to stand straight
and their poignant and useless pleas
inflate us with a sense of levity.
In here, the natural mysteries
are a consolation for our brevity
and the cosmic cycles of light and dark.
Its Shakespeares arcadia a kind of park.

At the end of Wood Vale, before we turn left into Forest Hill Road we walk past
a small family business. It is devoted to stone shaping and lapidary inscription.
Must be quite nice to chip away with a chisel while listening to wood peckers
and Radio 4. And so, to the bus stop where the entropic forces of the universe are
constantly at work degrading and reshaping matter.

Vanishing point
Each day I walk past a cemetery
a neat white sign over a log cabin
R. Gray & Son Monumental Mason
stacked stones waiting for judgment day.
While I sit in the shelter at the bus stop
my feet are washed by cemetery run-off
and, as if this wasnt bad enough
they have eviscerated the chip shop.
They have spilled its guts across the pavement
old brown carpets and chewed-up clay
in a lonely spot at the edge of town
without ritual or sacrament.
I had to wait there today.
Slowly, the elements are breaking down.

At this point, now on the bus, we pass my local pub. To be honest, I have
never particularly liked it it did not extend a welcome to me. Suburban
people can be just as territorial as country folk. Others must have agreed,
because the pub failed. It was taken over as a hipster place but you can still
see its origins from the painted over Trumans livery, from the 1930s, when
the houses on the east side of the road were being built. The nearest bus stop,
the end or beginning of the line for the 63, still carries its name, which was ...

The Forest Hill Tavern

Maybe I should give it one more chance.
The stupidly-named beers, badly kept
and the meagre, over-priced snacks
provide an authentic ambience.
The crimson drinkers whose stare is blank
sun-ripened by some Spanish pool
radiate their hostility
like lobsters plucked from a tank.
I used to pretend it was not rough
the bitter not sour, the lager sweet
until one of them turned on me.
It seems I was not local enough.

To our right, ladies and gentlemen, the rather marvellous Peckham Rye Common.
Everyone seems to know that the poet William Blake saw a vision of an angel
here. Most dont know about the deadly feud that took the life of Sagetel Sagouni,
president of the Armenian Refugees Society, slain with a revolver in 1903, in
Nunhead Grove. The common is my mirror of the seasons. Were with it for a long
stretch here. It is particularly lovely in the winter, when it snows.

The return
The grass is a shining white sea
a perfect plane, perfect shadow, a clear light
that speaks of possibilities.
The buses, as stiff as blood
form a patient line by the winter common.
There is still a frozenness about.
Figures are awakening from a long sleep.
As I pass by Peckhams parade
of peppers and fish, the startling green of the library
the solid geometry of the wood yard
disillusioned by freedom I am inured
to the slow, orderly return
to a life regulated by colour and light
a place of queues, where harmony is observed.
Nature is indifferent, but not this world.

A winters morning (to Dan)

How can we be sure its no longer night?
The world will be indeterminate today
seen through a gauze, in shades of grey
pitched somewhere between black and white.
There are stumps of men on the white field
of the stretched common, like a frozen sea.
Ice-rimed willows bend intimately.
Although we know that, soon, the snow will yield
we are fascinated by our ice skin.
Casually, we talk of nightmare and chaos
as if the winter could kill us
but we know that it will never win.
We will go to the library on the bus
and go to sleep; the light will wake us.

This is not Peckham Rye Common but a northern outlier. Beautiful willow trees
indicate that there is a hidden watercourse somewhere in the vicinity, perhaps the
fabled River Peck that rises nearby and gave its name to Peckham.

Mexican wave
The wind that lifts the polythene
combs the hair of the willow trees.
Playfully, it tosses packets.
It drives grey pillows across the sky
and pushes a child onto the bus.
The wind throws a Mexican wave
through natures stadium
in earths colours, yellow and brown
in a promise of renewal.
For our world, it was ever thus.
We are surprisingly nonchalant
as the wind teases the shopping street
toying with flags, turning our wheels
busily piling the dead leaves
choosing, though it can, not to harm us.

And so, we arrive in Peckham a village that became a Victorian suburb.

It has nothing whatever to do with the reassuring stereotypes of the TV
sitcom Only Fools and Horses, which was supposedly set here. Oh no.
Many ethnicities have passed through over the years and now, apart from
the hipsters and warehouse folk with their decks and beats, Peckham (its
hard to define exactly where it begins and ends) has a distinctly West
African feel. In Rye Lane, you could easily imagine yourself to be in Lagos
or Accra. Christianity is big here. What would John Betjeman have made
of the Beneficial Veracious Christ Church?

Autumn SE15
Brick ships loom through the clouds.
Pastel buildings, yellow sludge of flowers.
Peckham is at her brightest now.
Deliquescent. A cut-price utopia.
It is light that binds us through the murk.
A glimpse of Florida millionaires.
Todays chatter the economy.
Experts dilate, on six-figure salaries.
The city is a vast, decaying hulk.
We are its ghost crew, its shadows.
Autumn pavements are wreathed in mists.
Like wraiths, we slide through its cracks.

Ballad of Rye Lane

Sleek and red the sixty-three
bicycles and vans converge
Peckhams traffic mingled in
Cacophonous proximity.
The noisy vendors thrust and glare
flows to the pulse of Africa.
Beauty is on offer here
false eyelashes and human hair
scrawny chickens and breadfruit
mobile phone accessories
the oceans harvest, fresh and dried
giant yams, cassava root.
Even the vegetable displays
assault the eyes garishly
the crimson peppers shimmering
in an exotic cabaret.
Affirmed in passion and in blood
the dance of life confirms
in texture and continuity
that existence itself is good
and in the churches of Rye Lane
hope is offered to the poor.
Between the pound shop and Aldi
they wait for Christ to rise again.

10

An imaginary Peckham

11

Just imagine if the rain did not stop.

I would float through life like a shadow
glide down a ribbon of light to the shops.
I would enjoy going to work in my canoe.
Rye Lane Peckham would be my Amazon.
Like a suburban hunter gatherer
I would paddle to Morrisons
and scan its watery aisles for treasure.
To perfect my journeys, a new craft.
Smoothed like glass with sandpaper and plane
she would be sleek and graceful, not like a raft.
She would be the turquoise queen of the rain.
Her planks bent to the shape of my dreams
she would flit like a kingfisher down narrow streams.

So, youre sitting on the bus in the murk and moisture of a grey London
morning and you see a giant film poster, hanging in space like a portent
over Peckham High Street.

Just go with it
Sometimes there, sometimes not, it plays with us.
The sun is capricious at this latitude.
Casually, we hide our gratitude.
From a giant poster seen from the bus
exotic creatures in a heated tank
Jen and Adam gaze at us, languidly.
Theyre looking from a place wed like to be
clear skies, swimming pools, money in the bank.
America. They bring us something bright.
Its a respite a glimpse of liberty.
They dont have to worry, argue, or shout
be thankful for blue water and sunlight
or struggle to work, on the sixty-three.
Just Go With It, their latest film, is out.

12

God I love this building. It was designed Wil Allsop and opened in 2000 a
brilliant use of a restricted space. Colourful, modern and optimistic, it just looks
right. It has become Peckhams focal point and icon, rising majestically, as it does,
above Manzes Eel and Pie House, a survivor from an older Peckham.

Dressed to impress
Basking through winter skies
catching the sun, your metal skin
has the angular thrust of a sharks fin.
Poets should celebrate your glories.
Rising on stilts above an agora
your pleasing palette of orange and green
seems to reconfigure the street scene
you are a temple to Athena.
As if this were ancient Alexandria
you are home to a million stories
a towering knowledge repository.
You are a magnet, a cynosure.
Dressed in your coat of verdigris
you impress, you are Peckham library.

13

This old-fashioned boozer evokes the Old Kent Roads glory days, the 1970s,
when the ancient drovers road was bathed in the reflected glory of rock music,
armed robbery (George Davis is innocent said a famous grafitti) and boxing.
Henry Cooper used to train here, in what is now the Thomas A Beckett pub,
where David Bowie rehearsed with his band, the Spiders from Mars.

The Lord Nelson

The palms of Queens Road parade raggedly
as if in some listless Mediterranean
of pay-day loans and fried chicken
bruised concrete, a pale yellow sun.
Trafalgar Avenue leads to the Old Kent Road
where each pub could have been Henry Coopers gym.
You can almost smell his aftershave
splash it on all over, they called him.
Through the frosted glass of The Lord Nelson
like a sallow ghost, see the faded potman
his fingers twitch for a cork-tipped Rothmans
he is shadow boxing with Charlie Chaplin.
The pub seems trapped in an eternal night.
No-one would enter; not even in daylight.

14

In 2013, they knocked down the new Old Kent Road fire station the one at the
corner of Coopers Rd where pickets had appeared during the firemens strike the
previous year. I watched from the top deck of the 63. Thats it, I thought another
piece of cherished urban fabric is going, to be replaced by something bland and
faceless conceived by property developers. It came down bit by bit. And then they
built .... another fire station. To be honest, I was disappointed. However, there is
an Oak Furniture Land at 593 - 613 Old Kent Road, at the time of writing.

The fire station (for Sara)

They are tearing down the fire station.
Cubes are laced across a churned up field.
Soon it will be a glittering cave of light.
At least the common cannot be defiled.
I have seen its grass sea whitened with frost.
We yearn for natural light, weather
and seek to re-capture what is lost
in Oak Furniture Land and World of Leather.
Once this road passed through an ancient forest.
Always, the green wood pushes through.
The new furniture is temporary at best.
I pass the fire station thinking how you
would see a maypole, a druid at the bus stop.
Soon there will be a new place to shop.

15

The lake that you can just glimpse in Burgess Park from the 63 is a visual
reminder of the Grand Surrey Canal that used to run nearby and whose route
is now a cycle track. Sadly, the last bits of the canal were filled in in the 1970s.

The shining lake

For you, the lake is closed today.
In your fragile shell of painted wood
you would ignore our authority, if you could.
For that reason, we are turning you away.
There is danger in spontaneity.
It opposes our decorum and, that apart
order is the enemy of art.
What if everyone just turned up this way?
We have placed a sign on the high wall.
There can be no weightless glide
to freedom, in defiance of bureaucracy.
No, there is no space for you inside.
The grim bastions cannot fall.
For you, the lake is closed today.

16

Elephant and Castle 2011

At Londons gate it rose, in SE1
democratic and utilitarian.
Here, the post-war settlement began
the hub of Abercrombies London plan.
The giant blocks and decks of the Heygate
expressed the power and hope of the state.
In the sky-leaning architecture we see
faith in the future and modernity.
Over the estate, sheathed in black and grey
the vast Strata tower looms today.
The pages of slick brochures show us how
these flats cost millions; bankers live here now.

Books could be written about

the Elephant and Castle
(probably have been). It is south
Londons busiest transport
node shops, social housing
and two roundabouts. Now it
is being transformed by and for
the banking classes with coffee
establishments, student
accommodation, upscale
retailers and expensive housing.
I first discovered the Elephant as
a wide-eyed student at the
London College of Prining in
1986. It was shabby, darkly
glamorous and a bit scary. I
think I preferred it the way it
was then.

Reward for self-interest is the new way.

Society crumbles a slow-motion decay.
The rich get richer, the poor riot a bit.
The state did not fail; we failed it.
In a legend to make Abercrombie cry
Now here say giant letters in the sky.
Each era, a new skin is painted on.
The future lost; conservatism won.

17

On the site of an ancient predecessor which was destroyed by incendiary bombs

in World War Two this church is very 1950s. Its not beautiful. Never-the-less it
offers a welcome space for rest and reflection amidst the noise and hustle of
SE1. This is where I get off the bus, at the Stamford Street stop, crossing the cycle
superhighway (carefully, since two lanes of cyclists are hurtling down on you).

Christ Church, Southwark (to my mother)

It is because of you that I walk past
the humming glass and the tower cranes
through this island, this sanctuary
this garden, shadowed by London planes.
The small brick church is industrial
it speaks of utility not beauty.
You would have liked the flowers
you would have named them for me.
I seek the humility of repetition.
In this world of white lilies and prayer
time out, memory, reflection
beeswax and pollen decorate the air.
A tiny candle flickers your memory.
It is because of you that I am here.

18

It started with Tate Modern. Since 2000, gentrification has moved across
Londons south bank like a tsunami warehouse conversions, office blocks and
flats in places whose dark Victorian brickwork was familiar to Charles Dickens.
They spanned the river with a glass railway concourse blocking the view of St
Pauls. The Shard came, then glass towers spread like giant seedlings from the
Elephant and the south side of Blackfriars Bridge, dwarfing buildings that, in the
1960s, had looked daring. The new urban ecology brought Caffe Nero, Starbucks,
Pret a Manger and local outposts of Sainsbury, Tesco and finally Waitrose to
places that had previously been barren of ground coffee and focaccia bread. It
happened as I watched from the 63 the Manhattanisation of south London.

Ziggurat
We glance upwards as we
wander by at its vertiginous
engineering. Flimsy cranes
pinning blocks to the sky
the great columns and
slabs cloud-spearing.
We are bewitched by its
clumsy lurch into space
because we are earthbound. It dwarfs the
handsome planes and the
church. Echoing the hollow vaults underground
its shafts are like vast sarcophagi.They are allusions
to our vanity crude attempts to defy gravity
like monuments to some cruel deity.
We glance upwards as we wander by.
We cannot climb to heaven, but we try.

19

I rarely actually went into this pub, which was close to my office. But it was there,
across from the bus stop watching me reproachfully a modest, white-fronted
exercise in Victorian Gothic architecture and no doubt a meeting place for some.
One day, to my surprise came the unwelcome news that it was going to be torn
down, as part of some larger invisible development scheme. Once youve got that
first sentence, it has to be a poem.

The Paper Moon

They are demolishing the Paper Moon
its thin walls were fragile, after all
moving, slowly, to oblivion
the fatal touch of the wrecking ball.
Soon they will be stripped back to air
leaving, merely, a residuum
a faint echo of our evenings there
nights of moon-drenched delirium.
A smudged thumbprint of reflected light
all the time, she was haunting our skies
like a shadowy ghost, vague and white
the begetter of our mysteries
occasions of revelry and song.
Happily, the real moon will go on.

20

Simply, an encounter with a cycle courier (not this one) in the precincts of Christ
Church. They are not like us. They have evolved into a distinct species.

Humming bird
Apart from us taut, exotic and svelte
your existence is parallel to ours
with your dreadlocks, nose rings and bullet belt.
You are fast. Your minutes are our hours.
I infer the beating of your caged heart.
On your thin bike, the wheels are a sliver.
You do not see me. Your narrow eyes dart.
If I am clay, you are like quicksilver.
Some hunt singly, some gather, some herd
some esteem eating, or books, or song.
You are an exotic a humming bird.
In a moment you will flit away, be gone.
In humans, we value beauty and good.
You are different. Id follow if I could.

21

Get off the 63 bus in New Bridge Street at stop M. From Ludgate Circus, walk
down Fleet Street (where I always wanted to work. I didnt make it. Now its
too late). At the entrance to the street, note the plaque to forgotten writer Edgar
Wallace on the right. Proceed as far as the church of St Dunstan in the West. In
the porch is a weird curiosity. A crumbling Elizabethan statue commemorates a
semi-mythical Celtic King and his two sons. Some people think that he gave his
name to London.
King Lud

Moving through the city sinuously

artifacts are frozen in its slime.
In the rivers flux is your history.
Youre a carved effigy, frozen in time.
A city rose up, slowly, from the mud.
You watched each tide, each sacrifice of blood.
Its long ages moved under your head
ages of pestilence, fire and flood.
From the underpass an echoing melody
flows like water from a violin.
Telling a story that moves through me
it breaks through the citys grey skin.
I observe your streets, your blood, your bone
King Lud, crumbling man of stone.

22

Acknowledgements. Some of these poems have also been published on the Poetry Atlas
website www.poetryatlas.com. Thanks to Jeffrey. Thanks also to my mum for having me. To
Adam for encouraging me to dip my toe in the bathing pond of perfomance, ditto my sister,
Sarah. To Patrick for turning me on to history and Sara the mythology of the everyday. To
Sharon for sharing my world view from the top deck of the 63 and her memories of a south
London childhood. To Fergus for his acute diagnosis of my mental condition and constant
encouragement. To Reuben Woolley for his inspiring blog, I am not a silent poet. To Stephen
Young for his inspirational friendship. To Gavin and Jon (they know why). To King Lud,
whose stone likeness can still haunt our imagination. To Transport for London and,
finally, with thanks and great respect, to the drivers of the 63 bus, employees of London
Transport. Photo creditsWikimedia Commons and authors collection.
If you would like a numbered copy of this pamphlet, or with any comments, please email me
at w.hatchett@virgin.net