Jim Adams – newepicauthor, A Unique Title For Me – challenges us, every week, to come up with a song on Song Lyric Sunday. This week he suggests the subject “trains”. I want to keep this personal, so shall select a song from my own collection, simply, the first one that sprang to mind.

Back in the mid-nineties, I was very upwardly mobile, establishing my business in the IT world. These were the last few years before I met my wife, we had our child, and I became a responsible person. I happened to spend a lot of time in the car visiting one client or another, and of course I ended up listening to the radio. I was listening to chart music, aged thirty, for the first time since I was a teen.

At that time there was this wonderful phenomenon of Britpop. There were obviously the big performers like the Spice Girls, Blur, Oasis, but life was refreshing because of the sheer volume of music from less well-known bands which was bubbling to the surface. For my part, when I heard something I liked I was in a position to buy CDs without thinking twice, and so collected a lot of this music. \Just for these few years, there is a real spike in my collection.

So my choice this week is a song called The Day we Caught the Train, from 1996, by a band called Ocean Colour Scene. I have but this single track of their’s, from a compilation from the time which I later ripped to MP3. Enjoy.

I never saw it as the start
It’s more a change of heart
Rapping on the windows, whistling down the chimney pot
Blowing off the dust in the room where I forgot
I laid my plansin solid rockStepping through the door like a troubadour
Whiling just an hour away
Looking at the trees on the roadside
Feeling it’s a holiday
You and I should ride the coast
And wind up in our favourite coats just miles away
Roll a number, write another song
Like Jimmy heard the day he caught the trainOh oh la la
Oh oh la la
Oh oh la la
Oh oh la laHe sipped another rum and coke
And told a dirty joke
Walking like Groucho, sucking on a number ten
Rolling on the floor with the cigarette burns walked in
I’ll miss the crush and I’m home againStepping through the door with the night in store
Whiling just an hour away
Step into the sky in the star bright
Feeling it’s a brighter day
You and I should ride the coast
And wind up in our favourite coats just miles away
Roll a number, write another song
Like Jimmy heard the day he caught the trainOh oh la la
Oh oh la la
Oh oh la la
Oh oh la laYou and I should ride the tracks
And find ourselves just wading through tomorrow
You and I, when we’re coming down
We’re only getting back
And you know I feel no sorrowOh oh la la
Oh oh la la
Oh oh la la
Oh oh la laWhen you find that things are getting wild
Don’t you want days like these?
When you find that things are getting wild
Don’t you want days like these?
When you find that things are getting wild
Don’t you need days like these?
When you find that things are getting wild
Don’t you want days like these?Oh oh la la
Oh oh la la