Fiddlers Ferry powered the lights in our house.
It also kept the TV on and the tape recorder.
Later, it kept the discs in the Playstation spinning
and my iPod charged.

I remember being sat in my granddad’s van
in the passenger seat on a booster.
We used to drive out that way before nursery,
let the pidgins out before racing them back to the house.

When I was six we moved.
Me mum spent ages in show rooms looking
at “modern developments with four bedrooms,
the master with an en-suite and an idyllic view” of a power station.

I tried football for a while when I started high school.
I played my first game in the shadow
of one of the vast water towers.
It belched out steam for the midsummer friendly
and it rained.

Since then I’ve moved away.
Buses to Wigan for A-levels and trains to Newton
to sit with a girl in a park, play love games.
I moved to Winchester for Uni.
developed an “individual view on the world,”
which we all shared.
I don’t really see Fiddlers Ferry anymore,
but I know it still rains there.