25 MARCH 1995, Page 32

On the Dadar Express

The poem brings you to mind, as this place brings the poem: platform, nameboard, idling steam- engine, a landscape of sand somewhere in Tamil Nadu on the day I'm fifty three. I wonder at both of you for coming so far with me! Headmaster with jaundiced face, gammy-legged from old war wounds, how we boys smirked behind hands when you recited at us!

Never in our classroom long always filling some time-gap you'd croak before the bell rang, `Yes, I remember Adlestrop . '

Tony Connor