Sweet Arcadia - Saint Etienne

The trains took us away from the smoke, from Fenchurch Street

Through Limehouse, West Ham, Barking, and over the fields

To Laindon, Dunton, Pitsea, Benfleet

To Southend-on-Sea

39 miles and 40 chains over the fields, through the thick clay

We took over the neglected meadow, the untidy farmyard, and overgrown hedgerow

Smallholdings--homemade, handmade

Makeshift towns, a land for the people, a home of your own

Sweet Arcadia

Tumbledown shacks and tumbledown cliffs

A refuge from the rent book

We built our own shops, we built our own cinemas, we named our own houses:

The Haven, Cozy Nook, Landsbury, Beerer John, Tellsville, Bon Ami

And when the waters the breached the seawalls, we moved back inland

Into Surrey: Box Hill, Normandy, Selsdon Vale

Into Kent: Cliffsend, Seasalter, Dungeness

Into Sussex: Jurys Gap, Pett Level, Peacehaven

Sweet Albion, makeshift, make do and mend

We built mock-Tudor sheds and houses from train carriages

From asbestos and corrugated iron

We took your land, and we made it our land

Sweet Arcadia

Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia

Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia

Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia

Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia

Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia

Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia