Shaun Belcher
DEAD CENTRE
If England was a target and you were looking at cross hairs
In the centre of the cross hairs would probably be Didcot
The most normal town in England according to the pollsters
The 11th worst place to live according to crap towns
My home town, the town my family still live in, die in
A town that should not really be there, a ghost town
Only there because the residents of Abingdon and Oxford
refused the nasty dirty mess that they called a railway
So Brunel bent the line through a village called Didcot
They been taking other people’s shit there ever since
First it was provisions for the railway and a huge depot
Logistics was invented there to provide fodder for horses
Didcot has been a place to move stuff through and to ever since
From the army barracks, to the brand new Tesco mega storerooms
Where my family froze in huge freezers as warehouse operatives
Work for people with nowhere to go or reaching the end of the line
It’s the town people joke about, Didcot Parkway,
A place to glide through on the way to better destinations
Poets and novelists mention it in passing never stopped there
Never ventured off the trains to actually see it, a place holder
A place fit for commuters and immigrants, CHAVs and drug dealers
No place that anybody wants to live in for long, or stay forever
My parents grave is situated 500 yards from their council house
Now partitioned and resold built on a prisoner of war camp.
Thousands of lifetimes wiped away now and brushed into the past
Like the post-war immigrants who found a home there that could last
From Poland and Italy, Germany, Slovakia and the death camps
They preferred the dead centre of everything to anywhere else
They escaped the cross hairs and started again.
Built new lives and blessed every day that was normal
Thrived and felt safe.
Normal. Ignored.
No longer a target.
Dead centre.
A poem for That Was The Week That Was
From Thames Valley Texas a photobook to be published in November 2025
Further details here:
https://shaunbelcher.com/photography/2025/05/12/thames-valley-texas/