By the Time I Get to Peterborough

By the Time I Get to Peterborough by Chris Green

It would be fair to say that By the Time I Get to Peterborough isn’t as well known as By the Time I Get to Phoenix, the nineteen-sixties classic which inspired it, and its writer Merv Trimble is not as acclaimed as Jimmy Webb, who penned Phoenix. Jimmy for instance has MacArthur Park, Galveston and Wichita Lineman to his credit to name but a few of his hits. In addition, he has written songs with Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney, whereas you would have to say Merv is something of a one-hit-wonder, and this a minor hit at that. By the Time I Get to Peterborough featured in a light-hearted Channel 5 docudrama about the fens and on the back of this its novelty value sold more than a thousand copies, peaking at number thirty-nine in the charts. But this is not to suggest that the song is completely without merit. Who could forget the immortal line By the time I hit Hunstanton, she’ll be hunting, for instance?

The song tells the story of a troubled man who is trying to break free of his vindictive wife. He can no longer bear the Countryside Alliance get togethers she has with her coterie of fur-coated friends at their farm in the Cotswolds. Or the fox hunting meets. Or the boozy lock-ins at the Stag’s Head on Saturday nights (by the time I reach Cromer, she’ll be legless). And taxidermy is not for everybody, even in Chipping Campden. Not everyone wants stuffed animals around the place. Merv certainly doesn’t. The fellow, who in the song remains nameless, thinks he might be able to find peace in Mundesley. It reminds him of childhood holidays, happier times. Mundesley might easily have featured in the title of the song, but Merv felt Peterborough, being more urbane, held more cachet than the little village on the North Norfolk coast. After all, Peterborough is a cathedral city with good rail and road links, and thanks to its strong economy in the environmental goods and services sector, a growing population. On the other hand, most people, even in Norfolk, have never heard of Mundesley. The village’s relative obscurity despite its long sandy beach accounts for the song’s protagonist’s choice of a place to settle, what with his being something of a loner. Somewhere for hours of quiet contemplation while he works out what he plans to do about his situation.

Jimmy Webb of course doesn’t sing on any of his songs. With major artists queuing up to record his tunes, perhaps he has never needed to. But Merv Trimble is not only the writer of By the Time I Get to Peterborough but the vocalist, which although it might be stretching he imagination to say so, puts him in the singer-songwriter category. The song also differs from Phoenix in that the narrative of Peterborough moves on from the protagonist endlessly speculating what his partner will be doing at any given point of his journey, specifically to when he gets pulled over by the police just outside Burnham Market and is unable to explain what the sawn-off shotgun is doing in the boot of the car. The final verse sees him in his prison cell, ruminating over what went wrong.

Encouraged by the success of Peterborough, Merv scours the contemporary American songbook, looking for another title to work on for the follow-up. Perhaps the next one might do even better. You had to believe, didn’t you, or you might as well give up. Based on Gene Pitney’s big sixties hit, Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa, Merv comes up with Twenty-Four Hours from Tewkesbury, in which he explores a similar theme. After a long drive south from the north of Scotland, the narrator stops at a small border town to break up the journey. He books into a back street bed and breakfast where against all likelihood he meets the woman of his dreams and decides he no longer wants to go back to his wife of twenty years and his dismal life on their narrowboat. He wants to stay forever in the arms of his new love and he sets about writing a letter to tell his wife he is leaving her.

If this one works out then might there be others, Merv wonders. Might he have hit on something? What about I Left My Heart in Saffron Walden, or Is this the Way to Shepton Mallet? To Mevagissey? To Merthyr Tydfil? No obvious Amarillo/pillow rhymes there. What about Midnight Train to Gloucester? Grantham? Grimsby? Or maybe Viva Llan Dudno. Canterbury Dreamin’ On such a winter’s day. In the fullness of time, if he works at it, he might have enough material for an album.

Copyright © Chris Green: All rights reserved