Whence Homeward Bound?

Wednesday Jun 08, 2005

I was in a restaurant with a group of friends the other day and for some reason the conversation turned to Simon & Garfunkel, purveyors of spine-tingling close harmonies and evocative strumming. I have a massive soft spot for all things Widnes, which is an industrial town about 10 miles south of Liverpool, as some of my favourite moments have come whilst watching Widnes Rugby League Football Club (or "Widnes Vikings" as they are now known).

Widnes is famous for a few things. It is one of the largest chemical and pharmaceutical-producing towns in England (at quite some expense to the local air quality), it has a quite fabulous rugby league team (did I mention them?), and it has the intruiging Widnes Minimalist Group, who are so minimalist that their website is

Not Found

Now that's minimalism.

Anyhow, one of the great facts about Widnes, dear sweet Widnes, is that Paul Simon famously wrote Homeward Bound at Widnes station. Or so I thought. We got on to this topic, as we invariably do if talking about Paul Simon, or Widnes, or songs written at railway stations, when the woman at the next table (we're back in the restaurant, remember) corrected us. It was, she declared, written at Hale Bank station. Her reasoning for this was twofold:

1. He could only have seen the factories he refers to in the lyrics from Hale Bank.

2. He couldn't catch an intercity train from Widnes station.

Hmmm. Well, he couldn't have seen "movies" at the Hale Bank either, and he might have been planning to change trains. She then told me that the station it was written at had since closed. I wondered whether she meant the now disused Ditton Junction? Yes, she declared, that was a possibility. At this moment, I give the idea very little credibility and am clinging to old chestnut, namely that Paul Simon did indeed write "each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories and every stranger's face I see reminds me that I long to be, homeward bound" at Widnes station. Unless you know otherwise.

You know you're in Widnes when:

You see the Runcorn Bridge

The air smells funny

People remember this

Like this post? | | | |

Posted at 06:44PM Jun 08, 2005 by Patrick Finch in General
Tags: