Lyrics to Down Street

Dear friend you’ve come at last

I wish to impart to you something of a deeply personal

nature

Dare we venture off the map

And indeed between the cracks

To a private road of sorts

I presume you have a strong will

And the stomach to match the underbelly of our fair

city



You’ll need this firm crowbar

Whilst I implore you to utilise no sense of smell

And to think people live down there

A rush of chill air heralds our clattering necropolis

railway

Like a Transylvanian express plunging into rivers of

fungi algae and eels

Ten million rats, one for each one of us

And to think people live down there



A race of wild hogs inhabit the sewers of Hampstead

A cesspool suburb superb supreme

Catacombs of Kensal Green

I know you’d like to slime away

Like those walled up under Whitechapel

But I’ve my own kind of Jubilee line out of sight and

out of mind

And to think you’ll have to live down there



Strangled streams, smothered rivers, London always

gives me the shivers



Forty abandoned stations and Churchill’s last bolthole

Impregnable as Hitler’s bunker

Can’t you see them dancing on the platform at Down

Street