THE steady decline of the district's traditional heavy-industry base, and the supermarket proliferation replacing it, have been melded together in a 'rhyme of the times' penned by Sutton's memory man, Joe Jones.

Joe, from Irwin Road, who clearly recalls labour-intensive times of his youth when armies of blue-collared men had their working lives disciplined by the factory buzzer, puts it as follows:

The factory gates looked grey and grim,

where men would beg for a job within,

They faced a street, long condemned,

Rows of terraces were then the trend.

Those gates, to some, were a sign of hope,

where work was hard, but spared to grope,

They were also the scene of confrontation,

between the mass with no occupation,

There were arguments to spare their pride

Viewed by authority on the other side.

Through the gates trod the miserable soul,

With survival as the only goal,

At the end of the day when buzzers sound

They'd head for home without turning round.

Now those gates have been pulled down

Along with the factory, razed to the ground,

There now, a new supermarket will stand,

One of countless around the land.