I suppose all readers of this magazine have tried out for themselves our now not-so-new trams. Probably some are regular users.  Others, no doubt, are users of the trams on an intermittent basis. Territories previously unquestionably remote - the Shirley Hills, and also Bromley and Beckenham - are now, I am told, within easy reach.

Yes, trams. Whoever would have thought that we would see them again? There is something so cosy about a tram: the moist bricked street; dawn rising murkily; readiness to speak, looking up from The Daily Herald; the grinding and the screeching; the bell punch machine advancing up the gangway; swaying and swinging; fears, underlying, that the thing will never make it.

There is this good reason for travelling abroad: that they have kept their trams.  One finds the same cosiness; the same clanking; the same conviviality.  All the better if the tram is aged.  I was delighted to find, when visiting Prague a month or so ago, that if the tram was aged then you paid twice as much.  (Mark you, just how far all this should go in response to tourism I cannot say.  Do you pay extra if the thing breaks down: a longer journey, more of the uncertainty, a longer experience, further enjoyment, further payment? Whatever that position, they were certainly wise to keep their trams - in a way that we did not.

But now they are back: different, may be, but nonetheless welcome.  How modern they are.  No longer is there clanking, there is impressive acceleration, so far as I know, reliable performance. Yet you still get some of the old conviviality.  Alas: no more, The Daily Herald.   People read nowadays free issues of some kind.  Yet one still gets a flavour as one passes the gasworks; or stands on the platform at Therapia Lane.

Whoever would have thought that Therapia Lane would dominate our lives in the way it does?  Returning to the Parish, early in the morning, perhaps from Gatwick Airport, one seems ordained to wait at Therapia Lane.  It seems London Transport had some land thereabouts: ideal for parking the trams at night.  So Therapia Lane has assumed prominence not before dreamed of.

But now let us not dwell on small inconvenience.  Our trams are a delight.  Let us have more of them.  We Parishioners are very grateful for this new provision.  It is time for a picnic on the Shirley Hills.

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