In Forest Row

Poem written and spoken by my father, Steve Grenville, at the Brambletye Inn, Forest Row, April 2005.

Citizens of Forest Row unite
You've nothing to lose but your rhymes !

Two hundred deer gave up the ghost
To drivers revving up the most
Doing sixty where it's forty
Bad for nature and not sporty




And down at the Java
Midriffs bare
Les demoiselles de Forest Row
Play cool and unaware

In Forest Row
The trains don't slow
In fact the trains don't even run
Since Beeching's long since swingeing fun

In Forest Row they have it all
Things that keep them all in thrall
Pot and drugs and sex and beer
Fun and games --most after dark
People thrive------and drift apart.




There's food aplenty
That's for sure
Up at the cross
At the three times store
One gives you God
One sells you liquor
Films at the Hall
Give mental succour
Depraved erotic mean as well
You could be on the road to hell

And down at the Java
Midriffs bare
Les demoiselles de Forest Row
Serve, cool and unaware

But there's a farm and it's organic
And a school of origin Germanic
Ley lines passing through don't show
And the Coop gives Fair Trade a go
There's choirs and French and all things posh
Skateboarders 'clack' and call it tosh
faith healers, osteo's and chiro's
other worlders - Emerson


And down at the Java
Midriffs bare
Les demoiselles de Forest Row
Play cool and unaware

People here know what to do
Give them a cause
And they'll set to
They bared their all
And they bore witness
Marched London's streets
And cried 'No war!'
Iraq a mast a timber yard
Who called 'Timber?'
Waggish bard.

But down at the Java
Midriffs bare
Les demoiselles de Forest Row
Play cool and unaware