If you can come home to a place on a map
Maybe you can come home to a moment in time.
There is a certain type of light that falls on hometowns
Like mine when the latest humdrum day beats its retreat
And night steals in to take over.
The grey air goes violet and for once suburbia smoulders.
It never lasts long, but in the shivering purple violence
Of English Friday nights
I am returned to all of those I have lived before.
To deserted high streets lined by shops turfing punters into drizzle.
To the chrome walkways of fairground waltzers
And nervous sorties to formative cross-town house parties.
To the queues inside fish bars and outside night clubs.
To the views from buses and bedroom windows
Where I first felt the dizzy crush of teenage love and intoxication
It wasn't a place that set my coordinates. It was a time.
And though it's just one fleeting hour
It's loyal to me in a way that nothing else is.
A moment that keeps returning, week after week
As the shadows lengthen and the first street lights flicker on
This is the time I come home to. A time that comes home to me
Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, whoever I'm with,
By this time and its light I am led to the
Crest of the hill overlooking Desborough Rec.
And as the commuter trains skate past
On the far side beyond the rusting goalposts and allotment plots,
I watch the skies flush with the hues of dusk,
As parts of the past I thought were long-lost
Swim vividly all around me.
It's like I can reach out and touch them.
In that hour, I remember who I am
Though the twilight is loyal, it never lasts.
So I wrote these songs to keep me there.
Locked in an eternal homecoming to a night that never falls
And a promise that is never broken.
With four friends stalled forever on the young cusp of life
From Winter Hill to Ray Mill to Selsey Bill
From the Lake House to Paradise Park.
From the Manchester Irish Centre, with a love that endures
To the top boys and wild snares of that hurtling SR Nova.
This is for you, and our faded memories...
...caught and bottled, before they're ladded ash