Graham Bellinger
Malpas, Knighton, Oswestry, Welshpool. Montgomery - these border towns have the scent of their history running through them, and those border skirmishes are still being replayed in pubs and market squares on Friday nights and on the terraces of Bumpers Lane, the Gay Meadow and the Racecourse whenever the away team is from just across the border.
In my younger days a gig in some of those village halls or pubs was a trip to the wild west for nice middle class hippies like me. These days the hippies have often bought the land and settled in the homesteads - it's another turn of the wheel I suppose. And where it takes us time will tell.
Border Town
Border town in the Marcher lands
Where castle and scaffold once did stand
To keep the hill boys well in hand
Just across the line
A line on the earth divided states
Don’t be caught after dark inside the gates
English laws, Welshman’s fate
Wait across the line
Scored on the map the facts on the ground
Just scratch the surface and see what you’ve found
You don’t have to dig but a little way down
Under the streets of this sleepy little town
When the boys come in to the Lion bar
In the pickup truck or the battered car
You really don’t have to look too far
To see across the line
In the pubs and the dances on a Friday night
Under the hill in the fading light
There may be a girl or there may be a fight
Just across the line
They stand beside the dance floor glasses in their fists
Watching the town lads in the band and the chances they have missed
With the girls they knew at school and the wishes on their lists
And they know that they’re running out of time
Tomorrow morning they’ll be back on the hill
Sheep marked out, another truck to fill
Money for diesel and the mobile bill
Lets them go a little further down the line
Now the boys leave home and never return
Hills are empty for bracken and fern
Houses sold to city folk with money to burn
Just across the line
The walls are gone, the gates are wide
No one’s at home, no stock inside
They’re gone with the wind and lost to the tide
Just a cross the line
Both sides of the line now the history has changed
Hear it in the accents, read it in the names
Crossing the mark where Offa staked his claim
Reaching just across the line
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