• Ian Dury

    The Bus Driver’s Prayer

    Our Father,
    Who art in Hendon
    Harrow Road be Thy name
    Thy Kingston come
    Thy Wimbledon
    In Erith as it is in Hendon.
    Give us this day our Berkhamsted
    And forgive us our Westminsters
    As we forgive those who Westminster against us.

    Lead us not into Temple Station
    And deliver us from Ealing,
    For thine is the Kingston
    The Purley and the Crawley,
    For Iver and Iver.
    Crouch End.

  • Thomas Hood

    No sun – no moon!
    No morn – no noon –
    No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.
    No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
    No comfortable feel in any member –
    No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
    No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! –
    November!

  • C S Lewis

    The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning

  • Abraham Lincoln

    Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war; we are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, but in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.

    The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us here to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain. That the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

  • Ian McMillan

    Lamb’s Conduit Street

    A world in miniature; a universe in a grain of sand.
    You can look from one end and see the other end.
    You couldn’t call it majestic. It isn’t very grand
    And yet I think it’s monumental. A nuanced blend
    Of shops and popups and café’s you can pop in,
    Slip out of carrying coffee that makes everything clear
    And somehow this street quietens the city’s din
    And concentrates the careworn mind to the sheer
    Pleasure of simply walking down a welcoming street
    That asks you to pause, take your time, have a look
    And follow a different, independent, subtle beat.
    Buy a shirt. Buy a croissant. Meet your mate. Buy a book.
    I went there with my son and he turned to me and said
    ‘This is the perfect street. I’ll always live here in my head.’