3. Time To Go - Track Three from "Head Above Water" by Marshlander

Time To Go

Goliath said to David, “Hey, man, it’s time to pay!

You’ve lived here free for centuries and, if you want to stay,

Dig deep into your pocket and give me what you owe.

And, if you don’t deliver, hey man it’s time to go!”

It’s time to go, time to go

Loose the ropes, pull the pins.

Adieu, adagio.

It’s time to go, time to go.

The tigers won your freedom, but now it’s time to go.

David turned in wonder at the brass of such a thing.

It’s true he’d always been here,

But listen, here’s the thing.

When, long ago, adventurers stole the wetlands from the poor

To stop the Tigers wrecking wrote free passage into law

You can’t tell us it’s time, time to go

Loose the ropes, pull the pins.

Adieu, adagio.

Time, time to go.

The tigers won your freedom, but now it’s time to go.

That statute stood for centuries.

Each time the law was changed

The one remaining constant is the freedom we retained

To travel unimpeded on the drains that gift you land.

Travel with no toll to pay, rejecting out of hand 

That it’s time to go, time to go.

Loose the ropes, pull the pins.

Adieu, adagio.

It’s time to go, time to go.

The tigers won our freedom, we’ll choose when it’s time to go.

(Music and lyrics by Marshlander - all rights reserved)

I spent a lot of 2017 and 2018, including eight days in Committee Rooms Two, Four and Five in the Palace of Westminster, speaking against and fighting a Private Bill going through Parliament. You may know that a Private Bill is a mechanism through which private interests can have access to the means of changing the law usually in pursuit of commercial advantage. The process for proposing and opposing a Private Bill is somewhat different from those of Private Members' Bills or Parliamentary Bills. A few of us who live on boats on a bare minimum wage were up against big business and landed interests. They eventually got the Bill through, but not before we’d managed to secure some twenty amendments and undertakings that would, if adhered to, make the new laws less draconian than they started out. It wasn't a bad result for a muso, a postie, a delivery driver and a care worker pitted against a barrister, three solicitors, two accountants and two chief executives. The fight continues as the waterways authority attempts to achieve its goals through introducing new bylaws.

I wanted to document my experience through song, but couldn't really think of a way to do it until the tried and trusted David versus Goliath metaphor came to mind. The tigers in the song are the "Fen Tigers" who opposed the drainage of the Fens in the seventeenth century which they could see was going to result in the loss of a way of life. As a way of stopping them wrecking the embankments leading agitators were offered inducements such as houses in nearby towns and the promise that navigation on the newly created and restricted waterways would remain free for non-commercial traffic in perpetuity. The law we were fighting threatened to remove that benefit amongst many other rights and freedoms.