At eight o\u2019clock on each morning of his long life<\/p>\n
Mr Chumoudly-Green caught the train to Norwich<\/p>\n
Where he worked<\/p>\n
He was always alone<\/p>\n
There were no other passengers on the train<\/p>\n
He travelled on a pink season ticket<\/p>\n
Which he admired greatly as the train passed slowly<\/p>\n
Through the Cambridgeshire fields<\/p>\n
Mrs Chumoudly-Green was the keeper of the level crossing at Shippea Hill<\/p>\n
And was tasked with recording passenger numbers each day<\/p>\n
She did this by keeping five pink stones<\/p>\n
Hidden in the rockery<\/p>\n
Next to the signal box<\/p>\n
Her daughter Alice was a very pretty girl<\/p>\n
Much admired by artists<\/p>\n
She spent most of her time<\/p>\n
Planting pink flowers<\/p>\n
In the fallow flat fields<\/p>\n
That surrounded her home<\/p>\n
Her father who was an accountant<\/p>\n
Would admire these blooms<\/p>\n
During the summer and the early autumn months<\/p>\n
On Sunday the station remained closed<\/p>\n
As there were no trains in either direction<\/p>\n
But Mrs Chumoudly-Green would open the bookstall up at nine o\u2019clock prompt<\/p>\n
As she did on each day of the week<\/p>\n
In twenty years she had only recorded two sales<\/p>\n
One to a trackman repairing the track<\/p>\n
And the other to a young curate hopelessly lost<\/p>\n
She was helped by Alice until one day her daughter called in sick<\/p>\n
I am heavy with child <\/i><\/p>\n
She said<\/p>\n
Which is strange as I have never had sex or even been kissed <\/i><\/p>\n
Her condition was blamed on the dampness of the season<\/p>\n
And the poor display<\/p>\n
Of the pink poppy heads<\/p>\n
Nine months later her son arrived<\/p>\n
She called him George<\/p>\n
And he was put to work almost immediately<\/p>\n
Polishing the tracks<\/p>\n
Which had grown grubby during her confinement<\/p>\n
He was an effeminate child<\/p>\n
Who favoured pink nails<\/p>\n
And country lanes<\/p>\n
He was much loved by the gentle engine drivers<\/p>\n
Who brought him gifts from the adjoining counties<\/p>\n
And occasionally from overseas<\/p>\n
One day Mr Chumoudly-Green did not return<\/p>\n
From his place of work<\/p>\n
Which made him late for the morning train<\/p>\n
He had died on his journey home<\/p>\n
And missed his home station<\/p>\n
Before being discovered at Ely<\/p>\n
Stiff as a board and turning green<\/p>\n
He was buried in a pink grave<\/p>\n
On platform two<\/p>\n
And is visited quite often<\/p>\n
By his grandson George<\/p>\n
Who is slightly confused<\/p>\n
By the complex numbering<\/p>\n
Of the platforms at Shippea Hill<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At eight o\u2019clock on each morning of his long life Mr Chumoudly-Green caught the train to Norwich Where he worked He was always alone There were no other passengers on the train He travelled on a pink season ticket Which he admired greatly as the train passed slowly Through the Cambridgeshire fields Mrs Chumoudly-Green was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}