PODCAST: The Croydon Insider returns with a new panel of readers to discuss the latest Croydon news, in a Croydonites Fringe special that picks some of the must-see shows at the festival from July 1 to 5.

There’s even a live performance by one of the acts.

We also hear from Capt Mark Windsor RN Retd about what adult volunteers can get from helping teenaged members of the Croydon Sea Cadets.

Plus we talk about the weather, about how Croydon Council is on a go-slow over refunds of its unlawful LTN fines – and most important, how you can claim your refund.

And as the council looks for its third chief exec in less than nine months, our round-table panel discussion thingy also reveals how there’s to be a vacuum at the top of the local authority for at least two months at the end of this year. Will anybody notice?

The Croydon Insider is our regular news round-up podcast, exclusive content for paying subscribers to Inside Croydon.

And this month, you even get a poem…

Rus et urbi
By Johnny Dobbyn

Stood among the farmers,
I know I’m from the town.
Pink, wriggling, newborn and useless
in the country.

I cannot talk of beasts nor full mouths
nor the virus that leaves lambs ruined in the womb,
the fields charnel houses of death and deformation.
TB has not broken my herd, my bank nor,
nearly but not quite, my will to continue.

Yet go on they do.
All hours, all weathers, all year.
Sage, and ancient, leathered and bent.

Standing in The Oval Tavern,
among the tats, the punks, the black and brown,
the trots, trans, gays and poets;
the farmer I have winkled from his Devon shell is
in the town.

He has never been to ‘that London’ before,
let alone that Croydon.
‘Upcountry’ is but a land of myth.

Pink, wriggling, newborn and useless,
he cannot talk of chinging and wetting, slams and ket.
Every. Single. Thing. Is alien.
But he is ancient, leathered and bent: and thus sage,
and tries to take the people as he finds them.

Outside is a cacophony of jackhammers and sirens,
horns, helicopters and the mad.
Even by usual standards, it’s quite the racket.

Settled in under the painting called
Man Thinking About Boobs,
he glances from window to pint to floor
and says to me: ‘How can you live like this?’

I look at the space beyond
a middle knuckle on his right hand
where the rest of a finger used to be
and ask him the same.

• Johnny Dobbyn is appearing in Home Grown, an evening of the spoken word at The Oval Tavern on Saturday July 4 from 8pm (suitable for 16+). Tickets are available here

• To hear our Croydonites Fringe Special edition of the Croydon Insider, click here to visit our Spotify page, where you can access our whole archive of podcast material 

• Click here for full details of the Croydonites Fringe Festival and ticket bookings

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