I have travelled the buses late at night

One of Margaret Thatcher's many reported contemptible utterances was that '"A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure" (though actually there's some doubt exactly what she said, when, or even whether she said it all!).

Was it prophetic that just two days ago The Band of Holy Joy posted a refutation of this sentiment on youtube, with a film to accompany their gorgeous song 'I have travelled the buses late at night' (from their album City of Tales): 'I have seen the rich take the goodly fight, to drive the poor neatly out of sight,  I have seen the poor chase the shadows of the rich, they want to scale the Shard but they end up in Shoreditch'.



The song perhaps also references an earlier response to Thatcher's alleged remark - 'Only Losers Take the Bus' by The Fatima Mansions (1989).



The Band of Holy Joy are arguably the finest band to ever emerge from New Cross. The Fatima Mansions were an Irish band named after a Dublin housing estate, so no Transpontine connection there... Although Fatima Mansions' singer Cathal Coughlan was previously in Microdisney with Sean O'Hagan who apparently lived in New Cross at some time and rehearsed at The Music Room in New Cross with his later band The High Llamas. O'Hagan is evidently still around South London - someone mentioned seeing him at a recent Dulwich Hamlet FC match. See it all connects.